Sunken Treasures
by Cyrus Lowe-Monterrey
Summary: AR. 1st in Afterword Series. After Jinchuu, souls matured as seasons pass. Shihandai of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu rediscover herself and her families. In a springtime a child crossed path with a man who lost his way. Destination: Kamiya Dojo. [[FINALLY Betaed]]
1. Forgotten, Not Gone

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

**00: Forgotten, Not Gone**

_Small fingers trickled over her face in an effort to wake her, drawing an inward smile as she feigned deep sleep._

"_Mou!"_

_The infant's frustrated voice drew a minute tug at the edge of her lips._

"_Okaa-sama!"_

_She laughed then, and surged up, scooping the little boy in her arms and started tickling. Her reward was the precious, precious shrieks of laughter._

* * *

She awoke with a dying scream in the back of her throat. A name, choked back at the last moment like a dying flutter of a dove. 

Memories… for the past few months she had been slowly dreaming of things she wasn't aware she had forgotten. And she had not known, even now, to want the memories, or to hate them. Nevertheless… memories came, slowly creeping like age, like a sleeping glacier, slowly but sure.

There was no good in hating realizations, or knowledge. Thus she welcomed them.

Irony was not lost on her. Irony in all its' form, irony in its' finest.

Kenshin regarded himself as tainted due to his past as hitokiri Battousai, and most of all perhaps, Tomoe. In turn, the hitokiri turned rurouni placed _her_ on a pedestal of purity so high up she couldn't see the base of the construction. But if Kenshin was tainted, she was just as tainted, if not more.

Kenshin had been an idealistic child trapped in the wave of the Revolution. She had always known what she was walking into.

Who then, were the innocent?

But one thing was clear, one thing that no one really could deny.

She was not a good mother; not good enough to not let go for the sake of her son. In the end, she had chosen to save herself, fearing her inability to keep herself sane.

Not even for her son.

* * *

The sound of the wind was loud against the otherwise silence of the night. Kaoru watched, slightly apprehensive, as the candles burned on their stands, palms slightly sweaty. She stifled a gasp when her senses abruptly registered a flare of ki sudden like a microburst, stronger than a tsunami. 

Zori(1)-clad feet landed on the engawa, just outside the only open shoji screen of the dojo; Kaoru wasn't afraid of any interruption with Kenshin out of town, Sano packed off with Megumi, and Yahiko safely sequestered in the Akabeko. There was only one possible visitor she was expecting, and the scent of bamboo, incense, and slight fire smoke informed her that this was indeed the guest she was waiting for.

"You came, Hisui-sama."

"Aa,"

He hadn't changed a bit. Kaoru watched him with deep fondness and apprehensive pulse as she took in the red eyes, tousled ink-black hair that fell over his gaze, and the floor length black haori(2) with its embroidered coiling black-thread serpents, visible only when certain slant of light hit it in certain ways. The black iron fan in the obi(3) of his black hakama sat against the backdrop of deep maroon of his kimono, dark against his pale flesh.

No deepening line in his flawless face, two years weren't enough to age Touda Hisui.

"I thought the term was for three years."

"There is not a point anymore," Hisui approached without a sound, his zori neatly placed outside the dojo. "You remember."

"I remember, and that's it?" Kaoru questioned uncertainly.

Hisui's eyes were unreadable. "Your punishment was not remembering. The feeling of loss that you can't explain but almost overwhelming. Now that you know what it's all about, there really isn't a point in keeping that three years schedule."

His right hand shot forward, but before Kaoru could do more than flinch that pale hand had gripped, and reached in through cloth and flesh, searching for the seal that had locked away all of her power and her skills and left her as weak as a child.

He found it quickly, and Kaoru gasped in slight pain as Hisui ripped away the seal, power and skills returning to her like a thunderbolt, momentarily overwhelming her in a flood of sensation. Her senses overloaded until her brain couldn't take any more and cut off all signal.

She thought her heart stopped.

Gradually, she came aware, and found herself lying on the floor, and for a moment stayed there, enjoying the way she could again fling her senses far and wide, the sure knowledge of what her body can do, the way her analytical mind filters away everything for future reference, and the thrum of magic in her blood.

Hisui's tall figure—unusually tall for a Japanese—cast long shadow from the open shoji, and the almost overwhelming power she now freely felt once again wound tightly around him, ready to burst as soon as he let slip that control. The black serpent hissed at her, part welcome, part reprimand.

"You didn't have to be that rough," she commented mildly, her voice more mellow than it had been for years.

Hisui looked back at her and she could see that a storm had gathered and started while she was reacquainting herself, the flashes of lightning illuminated the coiling serpents on the black haori, the texture so alive that for a moment Kaoru thought she could see it move, ready to uncoil. "Think of it as a petty little revenge."

"Aa," Kaoru assented, "I was stupid."

"You were," Hisui was never one to try to make anyone feel better. "Don't do it again."

Listening to the thunder, Kaoru closed her eyes and felt the electricity in the air wash over her, the drumming of the sky, and the power in the storm. "I will try. That's all I can really promise, Hisui-sama."

"Just as long as you remember that your life isn't cheap." And it wasn't, she knew. Had she not been shown, then and again? She knew, she most horrifically knew. She just never understood why _her_ life was worth so much.

"My—"

"You'll get the boy back soon enough." Hisui forestalled her question. "Until next time." He departed like the way he arrived, an abrupt blink between there and not there. Kaoru pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around a raised knee, staring at the storm. Her eyes darkened into cobalt.

Then she smiled.

_The snow melts,_

_Water is free_

_(to) flow once again.

* * *

_

Author Note:

-Whew, finally beta-ed. Everyone, applause for the wonderful blooded-wyngs and Khori Bannefin who so kindly beta-ed my work.

-Now that I read back, things seemed kinda strange; and I decided that no, I did not like what I had been doing with the sequel of this story and chucked it back to the plotting stage. It seemed to be a habit with me.

-To anyone who had supported me so far: thank you very much, and sorry for the long wait!

* * *

1 Zori -- Cloth, leather or grass-woven sandals. Zori may be highly decorated with intricate stitching or with no decoration at all. They are worn by both men and women. Grass woven zori with white straps are the most formal for men. They are similar in design to "flip-flops". This is what Kenshin usually wears in the manga (the straw version, at any rate). 

2 Haori -- Kimono coat worn over the attire, usually three-fourth length or shorter.

3 Obi -- belt or sash, any kind


	2. Treasure Map

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

**01: Treasure Map**

"_Don't fight it."_

_She tilted her head and pouted slightly, pushing herself up and off the tree she had slammed into._ "Now that's new, coming from you."

_He chuckled; warm and honeyed, and his tiger-eyes were the rich canopy of autumn forest, leaf brown mixed with flecks of evergreen. "There are things that you could only win against by not fighting, Himeccha(1). Go with the flow; try it."_

_She ran over his words carefully, turning them in her mind as she considered carefully what he said and what he didn't, then she shifted into position. He followed suit._

_The blind morning cast both of them in shadows, but she knew he had no trouble seeing her. If only she could say the same—in the low light she could not discern his expression or clearly read his intent. His ki flowed calmly, serenely, like lulling river in a lazy day._

_When he suddenly lunged for her, he was again all harsh power, the force so sudden following such peaceful flow that it almost took her out of guard, but she managed to catch herself in time. And this time she took his advice._

_Rather than meeting him head on, she followed the flow of his power and pushed on the same direction, and rather than being catapulted to another tree she used his momentum to propel him off-balance._

"_See? Life is the same, Himeccha, think on it. Now let's continue."_

_She smiled, her blue eyes bright.

* * *

_

Kaoru-dono was changing, and Kenshin wasn't sure that he liked the change.

The sun was bright, and the lingering winter in that early spring morning made the air crisper than it was wont, gentle breeze tugging at his hair as he bent over the tub of laundry.

Kaoru-dono was always bursting with energy, evidenced by the way she chases after Yahiko every morning. Or used to; she had calmed down, quite drastically, much too drastically for Kenshin's peace of mind. Her movements were no more the artless enthusiastic burst of motion that they were when he met her, but neither did it resemble any other woman he had known. Kaoru-dono moved now with easy, flowing grace; the movement of a master fighter; efficient, economic, but full of elegance.

Curious, he had watched her kata(_2_), and the difference between then and just two months before baffled him. _No one_ improved that much in such a short time-span; the rough edges in her kata smoothed and sharpened, the focus of her ki(_3_) almost blade-sharp, no movement was wasted and he felt the controlled wind of her slash and chop and stabs like a palpable force.

Yahiko was starting to get worried, that he could see, and so did Sano and Megumi—the two having come back from China and Aizu—occasionally—respectively. It usually took only one 'Busu(4)!' from Yahiko before they were running around the dojo, Kaoru-dono waving a shinai angrily. But she had not reacted to insults for months now, as if she could choose not to hear them. She had once quite calmly said to Yahiko that her name was not 'Busu', and thus she would not answer to it. After that, she had simply ignored any name-calling thrown her way, including Megumi's efforts of getting a rise out of her by consistently calling her 'Tanuki(5)' for a couple of weeks. Any effort of insulting Kaoru-dono, thus far, had as much effect as water sliding down duck's feathers.

It might simply mean that Kaoru-dono had grown up, but on the other hand it was such an abrupt turnabout that Kenshin could not help but worry.

Also, all of a sudden, Kaoru-dono had started sewing; she had started a little business of buying bolts of material and sewing colourful kimono to sell again. It was a lucrative little business, and they had finally managed to afford some reparation to the dojo that Kaoru-dono had been itching to have done for over a year and never voiced. Kenshin had a couple of new kimono and umanori(_6_) hakama Kaoru-dono had given to him—she had refused to hear his objections, on ground that what he had was threadbare to the state of almost tattered, or _was_ tattered.

Another change that really drove Kenshin up the wall was that Kaoru-dono no longer wore her bright, colourful furisode(_7_) and tsukesage—though she kept her less brightly coloured tsukesage(8)—or kept her blue-black hair in that swinging high ponytail; she had opted to mostly wear cool or dark-coloured komon(_9_), or iromuji(_10_) instead, a wrapped tanto(_11_) slipped in her obi—he had even seen her in irotomesode(_12_) once and he thought his heart had stopped—she tied her obi in yanagi instead of her favoured fukura-suzume(13) and her hair was now always done up in a decorative bun, accessorized with ribbon or elaborate kanzashi that have no resemblance to tradition. He had once been sure that he knew Kaoru-dono, only to find out that he truly knows nothing at all; he knew nothing of her early years, he didn't know the circumstances that made her an orphan, he didn't know what she had been doing before he came, he didn't know – anything!

There were increasing amount of letters—through messenger birds instead of the postman—in and out. Books and odds and ends in Kaoru-dono's room multiplied by tens; two weapon racks appeared in the principle of the dojo last month—neither Kenshin nor Yahiko had come near it, despite their curiosity, as Kaoru-dono had finally shown her temper when Sano casually reached for one of them when they appeared and had to be peeled off the fence afterward.

Shinomori had found a new friend in appreciating tea; and despite her cooking skills, Kaoru-dono brew excellent tea with more ease than Sano could chew on a fishbone. Whenever Misao and Shinomori visited they could find Shinomori and Kaoru-dono on the engawa(_14_) with a pot of tea and a game of shougi(_15_)—Kaoru-dono had always been a considerable opponent at board games, and lately she had improved even more, Kenshin knew she used to think that he was humouring her when they played and she won, but he honestly wasn't, though she didn't seem to think that anymore. Misao, on the other hand, had become the proud owner of many of Kaoru-dono's more brightly colourful kimono, as well as becoming a dress-up doll for Kaoru-dono's amusement. Neither Oniwabanshu seemed to mind the arrangement, though, so Kenshin let it go.

To everyone's surprise, Hajime Tokio and Kaoru-dono had become fast friends, much to Saitou's horror. And the now Fujita Gorou had had to quit calling Kaoru-dono a raccoon in fear of his wife's retribution. With the amount of time Tokio and Kaoru-dono spent together, Saitou had become a common face in the dojo, amusing himself at Sano and Yahiko's expense. The wolf, however, had refrained from baiting him most of the time—Kaoru-dono had taken the Wolf aside for a bit when his jibes had gotten Kenshin steamed, and whatever she had said had put a very interesting expression of abject terror on the policeman's face.

But of all the changes in Kaoru-dono what really hit Kenshin harder than an off-track train was the absence of her cheers.

She was still bright, but there were scars in her _ki_; faint, spider-thread-thin scars that took Saitou pointing them out for him to finally notice—or admit they were there. Her silent affection for her strays—Yahiko, Sanosuke, Megumi, and _him_—was still in her eyes, but that bright iridescent blue was dark now, deep shifting cobalt and indigo instead of bright azure. Her smiles were true, and as beautiful as they always were, but sadness shaded the edge of that happiness. That she had taken to shading her eyelids and lips in pale blue did not help matters; under the moonlight she was a fleeting ghost.

_Who was she grieving for_?

Twice, she was not in the dojo when he made his nightly round this past month, and he would have torn the city apart to find her if not for the note she left tacked to her shoji(_16_). As it was, he spent those nights agonizing where she might be, and tucked himself in front of her shoji when she returned and went to bed, just listening to her quiet breathing to allay the demons brought forward by Enishi's Jinchuu(_17_) and her absence, barely last year and still entirely too fresh in his mind. He had spent half a year attached to her side like a shadow, and it was only after a year that his need for atonement overrides his need to always be sure that she was safe.

She saw more, now, than she ever had, and in her eyes he found his courage to keep on living, because she had seen what he was then, what he was now, and accepted both without question. In retrospect she had always seen more than she had ever let them know, but hence this wisdom far beyond her age? There was a quiet understanding and calm acceptance now on her face whenever he went off to atone for his past sins over her wary sadness—she didn't want him to go, but she understood, her eyes said, more than he does, what he needs to do. How, he dares not contemplate. It was enough for him, that she promised, unasked and silently, to always be there to welcome him home.

Something was bothering her, lately. He saw it in the way she paused over the tasks she was performing with furrowed brow, the line of her blue-tinted petal lips thin and tight in displeasure. But she had never pushed him, and he was obligated to afford her the same courtesy.

On the other hand it was becoming more and more evident that she was a woman. Kenshin had wanted her since the day he saw her, had loved her since he saw her determined eyes and burning spirit, and had only managed to hold onto the thinning strands of his control by arguing that she was too young, too pure, for someone like him. But that argument was quickly becoming moot. The depth of her eyes and the scars in her _ki_ said their piece, so does the elegant neck and the body he increasingly suspected was more mature than her kimono shows(18).

He was so tired of holding back—from the time she was seventeen. Years, such a long time to be craving a woman's touch, denying himself even an open acknowledgement of what he really wanted.

He wanted; he wanted her with a fierceness that terrified him, a coiling spring wounding low in his stomach and a smouldering burst of desire whenever he thought of her. She made him happy; given him a home, soothed his demons, and promised him without words that redemption was not out of reach. No one else had given him that: not Ishin Shishi, not his shishou, not even Tomoe.

Only Kaoru-dono. And he loved her beyond anything else he had known in his life.

It was almost like an insult that he desired her so… so basely.

Therefore it was always with mixed feeling that he left the dojo for atonement; what was out of reach couldn't tempt him, but it was just desperation. It didn't matter how far away he was, the petal-softness of her skin, the way her long lashes cast shadows on her cheek, the stubborn set of her jaw—as if she spent a lot of time gritting her teeth—the tempting plumpness of her lips—and the perfect way they pout—the elegant curve of her neck and her perpetual scent of jasmine; none of them ever left him. His dreams were even more inappropriate when they were away, to his chagrin.

And as much as he tried to convince himself that Kaoru-dono would be better off without him, he knew that he would not react very well were she to actually take that suggestion.

In truth, he feared that whoever actually managed to capture Kaoru-dono's romantic interest would have to be wary for their lives, because he knew he would be sorely tempted to give them a one-way express ticket to hell, non-killing vow or not, if not for the fact that it would make Kaoru-dono sadder than she already was.

That was the one question, that he spent hours agonizing over, and the one question he had no way to answer. What in the world did he manage to completely miss that made her so sad? Whatever it was, if any Gods left in heaven had any pity, let it not be because of him. He would rather kill himself before he gave her a reason to grieve, because without her, there would be no living.

* * *

The petite woman smiled softly as the little boy scrambled to chase the wind-blown letter. 

It had been almost four years since Keiji had come to her keeping, and while the circumstance that placed him in her care was regrettable she adored the serious, precocious infant. It would be time to return him to his mother soon, and it saddened her to see the little boy go; but she must be fair. Kaoru missed her son now that she was once again in full awareness of his existence, and Keiji doubtless missed his mother just as much, if not more. The little boy had behaved very well considering he knew the truth of his family's circumstances, but there was a wild restlessness in his gaze.

She would have to arrange a visit to return the boy to his mother soon, for she knew that the boy's patience was beginning to run out; he gazed a certain direction entirely too much for her to believe that he was content to wait.

The boy jumped and grinned triumphantly at the letter he clutched in his hand. It was the letter Kaoru had sent for him, and he had been reading it over and over for some time.

"Keiji, it's time for practice!" She called out, and the boy folded the letter and tucked it securely into his gi before turning her way. Dark, tiger-hued eyes glittered brightly in good-cheer, curiously almost the green of dark forest under the inky darkness of blue-black mane. The boy would grow up to break hearts.

"Yes, Aunt Orgulla." Sweet boy; she envied her friend a little. Orgulla could have no children of her own to dote upon, so she was determined to dote on her friend's son. Sometimes, she feared that she spoils him silly, but Keiji was such a sweet, well-mannered little boy that the concern seemed moot.

Besides, between this and that, Keiji might be an infant, but he had never been a child.

* * *

The shinai(19) sliced sharply through the air in a downward swing. A trickle of sweat trickled down his temple, but he ignored it, studiously counting the number of perfect swings he had managed to perform. It was a tedious routine, but he knew that in the end everything comes down to the basic: A slash, a thrust—a swing, a lunge—the rest was simply variation. To that end he endured, and conscientiously tried to make perfection of swing and lunge automatic, until he needs no longer think about it to be able to perform a perfect move. 

_Three hundred_.

Moving right into another set of swings, he squinted a bit in confirming the correct posture before commencing. Orgulla had started him on the basics of the way of the sword and simple hand-to-hand principles after his birthday by his request, and if he went to bed feeling like an elephant had trampled him, he could blame no one but himself. Still, insofar, he had yet to regret his request.

As he moved he heard the rustle of crinkling paper tucked in his gi and smiled to himself. He never said so, but he missed his mother terribly. Young as he was, reasoning had emerged very early in life. He knew that his parents could not help but feel slightly cheated at his precocious-ness, but they loved him as much as any parents might love their child; that, he knew. So it was the edge he held against the hurt that his mother's memory loss had been powerful enough to forget all about him and his father – that, and knowing what he knew, he could as much blame her as he could deny that in this world, the sun rises from the east.

His parents' lives could make a script that rivalled any of Shakespeare's tragedies, should anyone take the time to record it. They only needed good wording and good actors, then they were set to wring tears out of stone.

White crow, black dove. Irony was not lost on the worst of them.

_A hundred three, a hundred four…_

On the letter was his mother's clean, beautiful calligraphy. She had not apologized, but that, he understood. She had, instead, asked him to come back home, writing almost hesitantly that she would like to have him home, as if she no longer had the right. But the longing for him was blatant in that hesitancy, and he could no more deny that he was more than happy to go home to her, more than ready to throw himself into the curve of her arms.

Aunt Orgulla was trying to find a time in her busy schedule to escort him home, that he knew well. He was grateful that his mother's best friend had been the one that took him in when his mother had lost her memories. He owed her the world for her kindness and patience.

But he simply could not wait any longer.

_Two hundred ninety seven, two hundred ninety eight, two hundred ninety nine…_

Three hundred ticks of the clock.

* * *

He watched as dew slowly formed a water globe at the end of a leaf, accumulated, and fell. 

The dewdrop splattered against the tombstone after a few seconds of freefall with a soft resonance. Hisui stared unseeing, hearing laughter that did not resonate through the air, seeing a shy smile turning impish that was not there.

His tabi(20) was half-soaked by the dewed grass, as was the bottom of his hakama and haori. The sunlight rose in a false dawn, and last winter's ice glittered on the branches of still-bare trees. A ghost passed by, unheeding of anything but its pain, fading into the growing morning.

A namesake, dew exists for a short time before it changes form. He never meant it to apply to the person. Nothing was ever really gone, but no one ever guaranteed that you could ever find again what you have lost. A disgusted smile curled his lips as he moved his head sharply.

There was, perhaps, such a thing as living too long.

Finally turning away from the nightlong vigil, he whispered words to unhearing stones and spirits that could not respond.

The sun was rising. The dirt path that led to Kyoto was long, and he had things to attend to in a short while. Perhaps just as well.

Memories never fade no matter how much you try to forget them, it didn't matter how and where you bury them. Gold lasted no matter how long it was submerged in water—muddied and grown over by planktons and myriads of other water-growth, perhaps, but never corroded.

* * *

It was late, but Kaoru felt no compunction to go to bed, instead she sat leaning on the greyish trunk of an ancient-looking yamazakura(_21_) in the dojo's yard, silently running her fingers over the white saya(22) of the ceremonial tanto, tracing the inscription, scraping nail following the line of the pentagram and the tracery of a bird with her eyes fixed on the pale pink kikuzakura(_23_) and blood-red hikanzakura(_24_) just opposite her. 

The moon was full that night, and the sakura trees in her yard had always bloomed early and lasted longer than most other sakura, except maybe the ones in her other home—but that was unfair comparison. That the trees bloomed all spring and summer and once again in the short transition of autumn and winter had drawn many amazed whispers—and quickly-hushed mutterings. But she was not worried. It was enough to know who had planted the tree to know that what grew would be as ordinary as flying bunnies.

A couple of years before, she would have had more company than her own thoughts as she sat underneath the tree that had no business looking as old as it was—less than twenty years an ancient sakura does not make—appreciating the bluish edge of the moon so full it seemed to want to burst into some other shape through the branches of the pink-ruffled yamazakura edged with the white ruffles of Tai Haku(_25_). Life has no fairness.

When Keiji returned, what would she say? How would she explain, to Kenshin, to Yahiko? Sanosuke and Megumi would doubtless want some explanation as well. But how does one explain what happened when one was not free to divulge the truth of the matter?

Forgive me, but I got hit on the head and forgot I was married and have a four-year-old son? She sighed. Oh, yeah… that would go as well as… Sano's sense of direction.

She huffed in exasperation, scowling lightly as the slight breeze blew hair into her eyes.

If she had ever discovered an aptitude for sake, she would have been drinking. All this was giving her a rather spectacular headache, and it's much easier to use drunkenness as an excuse to blurt out things.

For a defence, she knew she had the fact that no one had ever actually asked her out loud about her past, and so she could definitely excuse not saying anything. In fact, that route sounded more and more appealing the more she thought of it.

She might as well do that anyway. It was not like she _owed_ them anything.

Satisfied, she tucked her tanto back in her obi and stood up, smoothing wrinkles and brushing off dirt and grass and fallen petals from her kimono. As she did so, a bit of wind swirled around her, blowing the pink and white and red of sakura petals against and around her, catching in the folds of her garment and among her hair. She absently raised a hand to brush them off before hesitating and lowering her hand back down. The wind and the flowers were like an embrace, one that a certain person would have given her whenever she faltered.

Sighing, she headed back into the dojo, petals in her hair and on her garment, a low, warm melodic phantom of a reassuring voice echoing in her ears. What she had forgotten, sunken in the recesses of her mind was not gone, sunken treasure ready for her to rediscover.

Life, love and lost, but no one can say she had never lived.

* * *

It was far from time, but the petals continued to rain down, never touching the earth. A strangely bare shikizakura(26) in the yard sprouted a single bud, blooming full and wide. Five pink perfect petals, like a painting, trembled slightly in the growing breeze. 

A breeze that made no sound and disturbed no other leaves or grass or flower petals.

The spirits, ghosts and guardians and mischief-maker alike fell into fascinated, terrified silence as the petals danced out of its time, wild like talons of a frenzied hawk. A black dove flew, pursued by a white crow without sound. Circling in perfect circle among the trees.

Paradox. The world shifts following logic that does not belong to anything other than its own.

A shadow, powerful and frail. Tiger-bright predator eyes, smile as gentle as a prey, a sweep of non-existent petals. He came, but he wasn't there.

The single fast-blooming flower held still, then shuddered and rent apart, falling into the growing ink of the night. Others petals followed, and soon the night was still, the wind hesitant. The presence had blinked out of existence as suddenly as it took form.

The spirits slowly returned to their activities, memories of tiger-eyes and birds and things-that-should-not-be-there fading quickly in their wake.

In her dark room, the sleeping woman stirred but did not wake, her eyelids fluttering without lifting. To the left of her head, over and tangled in the coil of her blue-black braid, were petals out of their seasons.

_The lingering cold_

_new growth peeked out of earth_

_cautiously.

* * *

_

Author note:

-This four season stories are crossover with a few other series; I invite my readers to a guessing game.

-The quotes at the end of each chapter were supposed to be haikus; I finally gave up trying to translate them into Japanese and wrote them normally. Because they were not intended to be left in English, the old 5-7-5-syllable rule is not followed. It is truly a pity I could not translate them well, considering I took the trouble of working almost each and everyone around the appropriate Kigo (lit. words that represent a season)

-Aah, the intricacy of Japanese tradition… I could safely say that they have succeeded in giving me headaches. But truly, it's all so very fascinating; what I wrote about in the notes is merely a dip in a truly enthralling world.

-The number of Sakura cultivars might seem ridiculously large, but I assure you, there're literally hundreds of them. I take poetic license in claiming that the cultivars I named exist in Japan during the Meiji, because frankly, I have no idea.

* * *

1 Himeccha -- corruption of hime-chan (little princess) 

2 Kata -- a set movement for a martial style

3 Ki -- aura

4 Busu -- ugly

5 Tanuki -- Dictionary says this is a raccoon, but that's incorrect; another translation calls it a "Raccoon Dog", and I'm not sure how much more accurate that is, if any. Tanuki is a common fixture in Japanese Folklore; they reportedly have a single leaf on top of their head and delights in playing tricks on travellers along dark, lonely roads. It's quite interesting that it's canon to call Kaoru "Tanuki", because "Tanuki" are sly deceivers (I'm rambling, ain't I?)

6 Umanori -- there is two type of hakama, the divided and the undivided one. Umanori literally translates to "horse-riding hakama", it is divided like a trouser, just nearer the bottom.

7 Furisode -- a kimono for unmarried woman, normally it had long sleeves, and brightly patterned all over. It is a formal kimono.

8 Tsukesage—A type of semi-formal kimono, tailored to make patterns on both sides go to the same direction (upward, to top of shoulders)

9 Komon – Kimono with a small, repeated pattern throughout the garment. Both married and unmarried women may wear komon.

10 Iromuji--single-colored kimono that may be worn by married and unmarried women

11 Tanto – Japanese knife or a small sword, made in the style of katana, just very short. Kaoru's tanto is about 15 cm blade-length and 10 cm hilt, the smallest common measurement.

12 Irotomesode -- a single-colour kimono, patterned only below the waistline. Worn only by married women, hence Kenshin's reaction.

13 Yanagi & Fukura-suzume—Are styles of Obi-Mutsubi, or obi-knots, or put more simple, the way you tie your obi at the back. Fukura-suzume, "rounded sparrow" is the style Kaoru uses before she gets married, it's the usual style for young people, and also the type used when one wears furisode. Yanagi is square, and everything is tucked in, I choose this instead of the standard otaiko (drum know fastening)… just because I like it better.

14 Engawa -- porch, or the wooden deck that encircle the house.

15 Shougi – Japanese chess

16 Shoji -- the Japanese sliding door, usually with the windowed half covered with rice paper.

17 Jinchuu -- revenge

18 The ideal figure for wearing a kimono has no curves; therefore they're bound or padded over so that nothing shows—the reason why Megumi actually doesn't wear her kimono well, considering her curves shows over her michiyuki.

19 Shinai -- bamboo sword for kendo practice

20 Tabi -- Divided-toe ankle-high socks. Usually white, and white is the most formal, but I heard it could be different colour as well.

21 Yamazakura -- an erect sakura tree with reddish green leaves. The flowers are variable in size with a diameter of 2.5 - 4.0 cm. The flowers have only 5 petals and are a light pink colour. The corymbs are 2 flowered. The flowers usually bloom in the first or middle part of April. This is one of the more popular cultivars in Japan and is extensively cultivated in many cities

22 Saya -- sheath

23 Kikuzakura -- very unusual cultivar sometimes known as 'Chrysanthemoides' in this country due to the chrysanthemum-like appearance of the flowers. This is an erect tree with dark-brown bark and true green leaves. The flowers are of medium size and with a corolla of 125 pink petals with the inner 80 much smaller and darker in colour. The peduncles are elongate, nodding and glabrous. These cherries bloom in the latter part of April

24 Hikanzakura -- this is a small tree with dark black-brown bark and scarlet flowers. The flowers are relatively large and open with numerous, delicate stamens. The peduncles are pendulous, and before fully opening the flowers hang down and appear like bells.

25 Tai Haku -- Great White Cherry - This cherry was lost in Japan around 1700, but a single tree was found in 1923 planted in a Sussex garden. Collingwood Ingram, who discovered it, raised grafts and every 'Tai Haku' in the world is derived from this plant. Young plants have raised branches and long shoots covered in mid-season by large, single white flowers among red leaves. The leaves are well spaced and leathery and on some trees turning a bright red in autumn.

26 Shikizakura -- "Four Season Sakura". This breed blooms twice a year, roughly in spring and autumn. Also called "Fuyuzakura" and "Kanzakura", but "shikizakura " suits the purpose of this tree in this fic the best.


	3. Shifting Sands

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

02: Shifting Sands

"Keiji?" Orgulla tried to repress the wave of panic that had set in when the boy in her care was not where he was supposed to be. She reasoned that he might have fallen asleep—but reasoning had failed to assure her. The boy could be as unpredictable as his parents sometimes.

A half an hour later, she was tearing through the Palace Ground, and every able-bodied person had been drafted on searching along with her. An hour saw a citywide search being carried out. Three hours later, the country's advisors were trying to soothe a very frantic Queen and help her compose a letter to a missing boy's mother while search parties left the city for a nationwide alarm.

Orgulla's fingers shook around her pen as she slowly wrote out her letter, lashes trembling with tears. _Where did he gone off…? Is he alright?_ _Please let him be alright, I beg whatever is listening in heaven…_

The boy they were so frantically searching for, meanwhile, materialized under the cover of ancient trees in Nara, and shook his head in barely concealed disgust. "Stupid translocation spell… I aim for Tokyo and it dropped me here…? See if I ever try it again."

Looking around, he stood silently for a moment, head tilted slightly, trying to calculate the map he had memorized in his head. Lifting his fingers, he tried to match the location of map and reality to find the road to Tokyo. Then he nodded, finding where he was, picked up his baggage and started walking. "I'm sorry Aunt Orgulla."

It would take days to get to Tokyo from here, but he was hopeful that he could get there under a week's time, as long as he don't get delayed by any—

Keiji blinked uncomprehendingly at the body thrown in front of him and looked up to see a full-out brawl in the middle of the street. He blinked again.

"What'cha looking at, stupid brat?!"

He gulped as the fallen man regained his feet and glared at him. He was preparing to run when someone picked him up like he was a puppy and the world blurred. He sighed and allowed himself to fall limp within the hold; the speed was making him dizzy.

* * *

"Saa, This one will… be back soon." The rurouni said softly, lingering in their goodbye.

Kaoru nodded, hands primly held one atop another in front of her blue, white butterfly-patterned komon. "I shall be waiting."

"Un."

"Oh, come on, aren't you two finished with your goodbyes yet?" Sano interrupted crossly, arms behind his head. "Don't worry, jou-chan, I'll make sure he comes home in one piece, so can we get going now?"

"No one is stopping you, Sano," Kaoru replied dryly, turning to Kenshin. "Make sure he behaves, doesn't pick a fight that will require him to get out of the country, or gamble away all your supply money." Ignoring the gangster's spluttering protest, she continued, "Be careful, and come back safe. I'll be waiting."

"Hai, Kaoru-dono, Ittekimasu." The rurouni bowed before turning around and leaving with a grumbling Sano. Kaoru watched them walk away until they disappeared around the bend before coming back inside, slowly closing the dojo's door.

A bird flew by and landed by the porch, but it wasn't a bird.

_Kamidori(1)_? They don't usually use a kamidori to send messages unless something important and terribly urgent happened. So could it mean…

Brow furrowing, she reached for the crane origami, frowning even further as she noticed the wrinkled folding, as if the folder was very weak, or trembling. That was an even worse indicator of what news could have been enfolded within the letter. It was wet, the moisture slightly saline; whoever had been writing it had been crying. The seal of the Mist Sea Kingdom at the lower end amplified her worry, and the personal seal of the Ruling Queen resulted in enough haste in unfolding the origami Kaoru nearly tore the letter, so great was her haste to know why the letter had been sent in such haste.

Quickly scanning the content, her eyes widened, and her heartbeat double-timed until it skipped a few beats for a couple of seconds into a blinding white pain. Then she forced herself to take a deep breath, letter scrunched among her fingers. Eyes wide, she panted and took a moment to regulate her pulse.

Her son was missing.

* * *

Keiji scrunched his face at the smell of burnt rabbit before he blinked his eyes open…

—And blinked again as his eyes focused on the young man sitting in front of the fire, smiling into nothing.

_What is he—_

Realization derailed that train of thought before he could finish it. Confusion loomed behind the screen of that smile; this was a man lost in life, unknowing the shores it's waves brought him to. Keiji could not say he sympathized, considering that to sympathize in the first place you need to know what it feels like. Keiji had never been lost.

Youth did not mean innocence. An empathic onmyouji can't help but _hear_ things, some of which they would rather not hear, _ever_, if only there was an on/off switch on their spirit ears.

Next one who says anything about needing better hearing will get a thrashing.

"Mou!"

The young man lifted his head, surprise chasing away his smile and bright but cloudy eyes blinked at the boy before the fox smile come crashing down.

Fox smile, the smile that hides your eyes and your feelings, this man before Keiji had been trapped within his own mask for a long, long time that even freed of it he clung to the shards, seeking familiarity. Armour against the cold, cold north wind called the world at large and humanity.

"You're awake!" the young man said brightly, smiling wide.

Keiji blinked. "Anoo… doesn't that hurt?"

"What?" The young man blinked as well, befuddled.

"Smiling like that. Doesn't that hurt?"

Surprise washed across that gamin feature. "W-well…" He rubbed the back of his head in a somewhat unfocused manner.

Taking pity on the young man, Keiji deliberately changed the topic, "Anyway, you're very fast, nii-chan. What's your name?"

He was rewarded with a couple of blinks. Man, this nii-chan has to learn to find his way soon, before he stepped onto something he shouldn't. Though all that befuddlement was undeniably cute. The 'aww-I-wanna-pinch' cute.

"Seta Soujirou."

Keiji cocked his head slightly. Seta Soujirou, the Tenken. His mother had sent letters to update both Orgulla and him on what had been happening around the dojo and its' inhabitants. The JuponGatana had been one of the more interesting topics and Keiji had done some research. It didn't surprise him too much; his okaa-sama had decided, after hearing what Himura-san, Sagara-san, and the surviving JuponGatana she met could say about Tenken, that she should not hate someone who could only be described as 'lost'.

And indeed, the Seta-nii was as lost as an abandoned puppy.

Keiji wanted to help him. It was not something anyone taught him to do, nor did he do it out of a sense of right or wrong. He simply very much thought that this young man deserved a little advice about what he might find for himself down the way—years later, perhaps—a bit earlier; then he could start living again.

"My name is Keiji! Nice to meet you, Seta-nii!"

The young man blinked again. "Please, call me Soujirou."

"Sou-nii, then!" Young children chirps, so Keiji chirped, the key to good disguise was to constantly maintain the facade.

"Aa.." A couple more blink. "If you feel better, Keiji-kun, why don't we go to find your parents?"

Keiji snickered inwardly as he turned huge, pleading eyes on the young man. "Otou-sama is gone, so Keiji has to find Okaa-sama in Tokyo," he said in his best childish voice. "But Keiji doesn't quite know where to go! Can Sou-nii help Keiji find Okaa-sama?"

The smile turned up again, but this time it was a little strained at the edge. "Keiji-kun, I don't think that is such a good idea…"

"Please?" Keiji let his eyes widened, "Or does Sou-nii have other plans already? Keiji wouldn't want to impose if that is the case."

A gulp, ha, time to close the trap. "N-no, but—"

"_Please?_"

Seta Soujirou stared helplessly at the pleading face in front of him and finally nodded, hesitantly.

Inwardly, Keiji smiled. _Score._ Then he launched himself forward, laughing, and hugging the year-old rurouni. "Yatta! Arigato de gozaimashita, Sou-nii!"

And when he heard Soujirou's startled laugh and felt his hug hesitantly returned, he grinned triumphantly. Keiji was much like his father when it comes to doing things.

They have absolutely no compunction against using any and all weaknesses they can put their sneaky fingers on. Honour? _What_ honour? No, sirrah, no time for anything like that, now how would you like to fall off your throne?

* * *

When Yahiko found Kaoru she was staring emptily at the yard, a steaming pot of tea sitting beside her on the engawa. Her poise was rigid the way it had never been. As much as Yahiko shouted that Kaoru was a hag, she was not; she normally had an easy grace, changed now into a stunning elegance, but never this rigid tenseness.

"Kaoru?" he asked, and when Kaoru turned her head to him he very nearly had a heart attack.

What put that horrified dusk in her eyes? Kaoru's eyes were the colour of solid night, empty, shuttered, deeply… worried?

Not able to meet her eyes any longer, he lowered his own, and set upon her hands. Those fine, sword-callused hands were clenched white around a yunomi(_2_) and trembled lightly.

"What's wrong, Kaoru? Is it Kenshin? You shouldn't…" _worry so much, Kenshin can take care of himself_. But the words would not leave his throat, and he knew enough, by now, that that was not really true anyway. Between the deterioration of Kenshin's body because of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu Ougi and the man's natural penchant to attract trouble, there was no telling what might happen to him.

And it's not like Kenshin doesn't have enemies; he had plenty happy to rip him apart.

But Kaoru had never been like this before, not even when Kenshin went to Kyoto that first time… Or, Yahiko thought with sinking feeling, maybe she had, just not in front of her only student.

Kaoru shifted, "It's not Kenshin."

Yahiko's eyes snapped back to her face. "Not Kenshin?" he parroted. Who else but Kenshin would get her in such a state?

His sensei—thought his pride would never let him call her that to her face—took a deep, shaking breath. Her hands clenched tighter around the yunomi and it cracked before she forced her fingers to relax. "My son."

Yahiko blinked. Did he hear…?

"Son?" he parroted again. Kaoru… had a _son?_

Kaoru had a _son?_

He blinked again, trying to register her words to his brain.

_Kaoru had a son?_

_Kaoru had a son!_

"Your… s-son?" the proud Tokyo Samurai finally stuttered.

Another shaking breath; Kaoru put aside her yunomi and stood. "My son is missing."

Oh, that was _too_ much. Kaoru had a son. His sensei had a son.

Yahiko's vision turned black.

* * *

Seta Soujirou really was not sure what he was doing when he agreed to escort a child from Kyoto to Tokyo. But, seeing the little boy skipping along beside him he knew well why he did. Anything could happen to a single child on a journey like this, and Soujirou couldn't, in what conscience he had, let that happen.

Keiji-kun was a sweet boy; they had no money to go by train, and Soujirou was wary to trust any other method of transportation that was not his own feet, so they walked, but the boy didn't protest.

Frowning, Soujirou studied the boy beside him from the corner of his eyes. The dark green kimono and earth-brown hakama the child wore were plain, but well made enough that this could be the son of a well-to-do family. There was a shinai slung on his back, well worn, but of good quality. The straw hat hanging over the shinai seemed to be to hide the shinai more than for any other purpose.

It was an interesting collection of ensemble; the boy looked too shabby for robbers to bother with at first glance, and if he were older, Soujirou would have concluded that the apparent shabbiness was completely intentional. But Keiji was young, and no one of their right mind would have sent a child on such a long journey alone, so could the appearance be mere coincidence?

Keiji-kun had the making of a swordsman, apparent in his graceful gait and posture, and Soujirou was curious to see how well the child handled the shinai.

Wide eyes met his own, and the child giggled. "Is there something on Keiji's face, Sou-nii?"

Cute. "How long have you been practicing with that shinai?"

Another glass-bell giggle. "Keiji had been learning since his fourth birthday!"

Soujirou was taken aback; that was quite an early start. "Do you like learning the swords?" Truthfully, he didn't know why he was so curious. But this boy would one day be a dangerous adversary, given the chance, and Soujirou was curious to see him bloom.

"Un! Keiji likes learning," the boy nodded happily. "Aunt Orgulla said if Keiji practices diligently, Keiji can be as good as Otou-sama one day!"

So Keiji-kun admires his father. Soujirou's mouth curved in a real smile. He wondered what kind of man Keiji-kun's father was like. Stern? Kind? Tall? If he was anything like Keiji-kun, then Soujirou was very sorry to have missed the opportunity to meet him.

His smile disappeared for a while. Or maybe he shouldn't. Keiji-kun was a very, very sharp young boy. Soujirou had a feeling that his smile hadn't fooled the boy much.

_Smiling like that. Doesn't that hurt?_

Or, perhaps, he had not fooled the boy at all. Soujirou had heard that some children were in fact harder to trick than adults, but he hadn't met one as such. He had a feeling that this would be a most singular experience.

Keiji-kun was neither fooled by his smiles nor fake cheerfulness. He had also changed the subject for Soujirou's benefit rather than pure shift of attention. There was a slight look, sometimes, when Keiji-kun wasn't aware that he was watched, that spoke of someone older than they should be.

Keiji-kun also had a vocabulary well beyond his years, the main reason why Soujirou most certainly didn't believe him when the boy said he didn't know his own family name. Why the child kept his family name a secret the ex-JupponGatana couldn't fathom. Still, maybe he could learn something from this journey.

Tokyo… Himura-san was in Tokyo too, wasn't he? Maybe he would not mind so much if Soujirou dropped in for a visit.

* * *

When Yahiko came to, he sat up on his own futon, in the room assigned to him in the Kamiya dojo. The sky had darkened outside, and in a moment of disorientation he wondered just what had put him in bed.

Then he remembered his strange conversation with Kaoru, and tore off to look for her.

He wanted an explanation.

Yahiko found her in the dojo, in hakama and gi and absently working through an unfamiliar kata He sat, admiring the controlled power and precision in her movement. Kenshin might have thought he didn't notice, but Kaoru seemed to suddenly remember a lot more to the Kamiya's sword style than she did previously. Those unfamiliar ones Yahiko tried his best to analyse and learn, but so far he fell short.

It frustrated him.

But he would not ask; something told him that this, Kaoru would not teach him. It baffled him that he could think so, being her first apprentice and successor and all. Logic said that Kaoru would eventually hand down everything of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu to him, but Instinct whispered the uneasy thought that Logic were operating on too many assumptions, and that it was for his own good that Kaoru did not teach him.

At least, not as he was.

Yahiko held hope that he would eventually be worthy to learn. Until he heard about Kaoru's son.

His mood took a downturn. In the end, Yahiko was not a Kamiya, and what could he do about it? His bloodline was not something he could control; It's not like babies have leave to choose what family they would like to be born into.

"There is a reason I don't teach you this, Yahiko."

His head snapped up to meet stormy cobalt eyes, streaked with lightning. "There is?"

Kaoru nodded, her lips twisting in a half smile. "This is not Kasshin Ryuu."

All thought screeched to a halt. "It's not?" Yahiko croaked. "But it's still a Kamiya sword style, right? I'm sure it is."

"Indeed?" There was a quirk in her half-smile that bespoke amusement. "You can say it is the predecessor of Kasshin. But it is never taught outside," she paused, "and real swords—good swords—are never easy to come by, especially now in the Meiji."

Kasshin Ryuu was a style that utilized the weight and bluntness of shinai and bokken(_3_) in comparison of real sword, and to actually effectively use it with a real sword, even Kenshin's sakabatou(_4_) would take quite a bit of intense conversion practice.

"But Kasshin is very old, right? You said that yourself that people only think your father developed it because he was the one who started teaching it to the public." Yahiko croaked again, mind whirling.

"Predecessor is not the right word," Kaoru mused. "This is not common knowledge, but Kamiya's sword style is a triple style, two of which is non-lethal. One is Kasshin, and as you know, it is a style created to take advantage of blunt weapon. What you saw me performing is the other non-lethal style; it is a style that uses a real sword."

"_What?_"

"Specifically, it is designed to take advantage of a blade like the sakabatou. Two edges, a choice: but the blunt edge is prevalent."

Yahiko's mouth dropped open and his eyes bulged. "Sakabatou Like Kenshin's sakabatou?"

"_Like_ a sakabatou, I did not say that it _is_. I told you it is non-lethal, as much as it can get away with. You _can_, despite popular belief, kill with a sakabatou. Now, the third style… uses katana(_5_), but that is a style that is history. No one had managed to learn it in hundreds of year, so if you're asking me to teach you, you might as well go make a stone talk."

Yahiko nodded dazedly. "Alright, I get it. Never ask about the style for the katana. I'll keep them in mind."

Kaoru smiled and rotated her sword arm, easily spinning her suburito(6) between her fingers. "You shouldn't ask about the Kirigami either. Kasshin is enough for you, and by the way you keep asking me for techniques before you completely mastered the last one tells me that you have no patience to be able to learn Kirigami. Not without killing yourself first."

Yahiko ducked his head, blush staining his cheeks.

"If you can master Kasshin, that is enough to make you a very good swordsman. I know that sometimes you think it's weak and you'd much rather learn Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu—"

"That's not true!" Yahiko protested.

"Oh, really?"

The boy nodded frantically. "Protecting is a much harder thing to do compared to killing."

"Did Kenshin tell you that?"

Yahiko spluttered. "Hey! Couldn't I have come up with it on my own?" he lamented. "I know that I'm still an immature brat, but I'm trying to grow up fast so I—"

Kaoru smiled and dropped her hand on the kneeling boy's hair. "Don't be in such a hurry." She murmured. "That if you can be a child a little longer is a blessing. We adults all want to go back to our childhood; ask Kenshin if you don't believe me. Children are immortal, adults are not." She smiled gently, but inscrutably.

"But—"

"I know that you were wondering about being the successor of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu. That has not changed. Keiji will come home, but he will always be his father's successor, whether or not he learns Kamiya's triple style. When I'm gone, I expect you to hand down the teachings of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu to the next generation. You understand what I'm trusting you with, don't you?"

"Yes." Yahiko gulped. Not only did she trust him with the techniques; she trusted him to keep and hand down her family's principle, teaching, and philosophy. It was a surprisingly heavy responsibility, now that it was finally said out loud.

"Good."

Yahiko sat back on his heels. "Kaoru?" Now, or never. He knew there would be other chances to ask. But he might as well ask now.

"Mm?"

"You never told us you have a son." There, he said it; thought it was so rushed it was almost garbled.

Stormy eyes regarded him for a moment before turning away, Kaoru taking a pose for another kata. "None of you asked. If you take it for granted that I have no other family, well, that is not my problem, is it?"

No, he supposed that it wasn't.

"Besides, it's not a topic that normally comes up in a conversation. As much fun as it would be to see Kenshin and Sano gaping with their mouths open, it's not something that someone can just bring out of the blue."

"That's true." Yahiko allowed, a bit distracted by the graceful, rotating uppercut she performed. "Can I be there when you tell Kenshin and Sano?"

"Why not?"

The boy grinned, leaning forward and following the suburito as it switched direction mid swing. "What's he like?"

"Keiji? Precocious." Kaoru half-turned, a measured slash to her right. "Sometimes, I feel cheated. Half of being a parent is to guide, to raise, to answer embarrassing questions. Keiji was born mature. He didn't need to ever be told what casual cruelty is, what kindness is. In his shadow, I see an old man who had lived a full life. Whoever was rinsing the memory of his last cycle of life before Keiji's birth must have done a botched job."

Yahiko absorbed all this with a slight frown. "Why isn't he here?"

Kaoru stopped. She turned toward him and for the first time, Yahiko saw the tormented guilt and troubled sorrow plainly in his sensei's eyes.

"Something happened, and I was not reacting very well to it."

So… so, so, so…

There _was_ a husband to mourn.

Kaoru turned back and restarted her kata. "My best friend took him in when it became clear that I was not in a fit condition to raise a child."

Slash-duck-pivot-thrust. Yahiko winced; that last hit would hurt a lot if it connects. "How old is Keiji?"

"He was born in autumn, in Hazuki(7)… That means about four-and-a-half years old. My friend Orgulla started him on the basics of swordsmanship after his last birthday. She said…" Kaoru's last swing was slow, almost lazy as it pulled back, but Yahiko felt the wind rush across his face as she thrust forward in a lunge, the rice paper of the shoji crackled as it was blown backward slightly.

"She said?" he prompted as Kaoru straightened, signalling the end of her kata.

"She said he was doing very well. He is very conscientious in working his swings—she told me he undertook himself to do a thousand swings a day, on top of everything. And he was good; from what she watched, she said his stance and posture is perfect, and most of the time, he didn't have to think to be able to do a perfect swing."

Yahiko whistled in admiration. "I would love to see that. Are you sure your friend is not exaggerating?"

Kaoru huffed a laugh. "Orgulla? She refers to typhoons as 'troublesome breezes'; trust me when I say that she does not exaggerate. Besides, she has an excellent eye for talents and swordsmanship, and herself is an opponent I would not want to face seriously in battle if there were something critical in the outcome. I would like to see just how much she didn't say…"

Any trace of humour disappeared from her face, and when she suddenly turned away to bow to the principles and promptly left the dojo, Yahiko couldn't blame her for cutting their conversation short.

Her son was missing, and it seems without a trace. What mother would be in a mood to banter?

* * *

_His face was unusually pensive as he watched the child happily cooing at the colourful puppet. She watched him watch their son, studying the carefully blank expression._

"_Frown harder, you'll get a wrinkle soon enough."_

_He looked up to meet her eyes, murky brown eyes lightening into sun-drenched autumn forest. The little boy noticed them and crawled over, cooing. She caught the baby and spun him around once, before settling the happily giggling child against her._

"He's too young." _The man watching them said slowly, carefully. _"Too young to be so aware. He forms complete thoughts, do you notice?" _He talked directly to her mind, and in confusion, she followed his mode of communication._

_She turned startled eyes toward him. _"I did, but I didn't think much of it." _Her eyes darkened slightly as she bounced the baby in her arms, earning baby laughter._

"Neither of us started forming complete thoughts until we were at least two years old. He's not even a year old yet."_ He turned away slightly, looking up at the ceiling. Then he turned toward the yard and something caught his eyes. Contemplatively, he looked at the child in her arms. _"Wait here."

_She followed his retreating figure into the yard, where he stood still for a moment before quickly catching something in his fist._

_She gave a questioning tilt of her head when he returned, but he didn't answer her. "Keiji," he called out teasingly. The baby turned curious tiger-eyes toward him, suckling on a thumb. The man brought up his fist and slowly unfurled it. On his palm lay an unmoving, colourful butterfly._

_She felt the tiny body in her arms go rigid, and looked down abruptly._ "He's… upset."

_The butterfly looked dead, but a moment later, it fluttered, as if waking, then lazily flapped its wings. It flew away, unharmed, back out the open shoji. Keiji's distress faded away, and he cuddled against her sleepily._

"I thought so. He understood so clearly, there's no mistaking it." _She turned dark eyes toward him, to find his eyes once again murky ground._

_Biting her lips, she forced herself not to tense._ "Do you think it's because of…"

"No." _he replied with utter certainty_. "No, Shidou-sama would have said something if it was a possibility. No, I'm quite sure it wasn't that."

_They were silent. A cricket chirped and the wind chime tinkled in the slight breeze. The sun disappeared behind a thin cloud, surveying the world through a slight haze. She ran a distracted hand across the tiny back of the child sleeping against her_.

"It doesn't matter."

_He smiled at her._ "No, it doesn't matter. He's our child, and nothing could change that."

The spring thunder

suddenly cleaves the sky,

startling the sleeping man.

* * *

Author Note: (Might be spoilerific)

-Keiji might sound a little unrealistic, but the point is, he was not supposed to be. While I'm trying to not make God-characters (and he won't be), Keiji does cheats in that direction. Trying to mix different blend of power can be a headache.

-On another note, I'm known to be cruel to my characters. Things won't end… erm… too happily.

-On the Kamiya triple sword styles, I'm finding it a tad difficult to actually come up with something believable—it might have been easier had I a background in swordsmanship or just plain martial arts, but the fact is I don't. And if not for the fact that I need none of that for this "Spring" part of the series, I would have killed the story early. In fact, this is one of the hold-up on the sequel. That, and the fact that I could not write fight scenes.

-People tells me that I get too caught up in details… I wonder if that makes me a bad writer

* * *

1 Kamidori -- paper bird. For reference, this is usually messenger bird, though sometimes it could be used as weapon (ala Sumeragi Subaru from Tokyo Babylon/X-1999) 

2 Yunomi – basic Japanese teacup, which usually is made under tsutsugata-shape, and looks like handle-less mugs instead.

3 Bokken – wooden sword, also called bokuto. They are heavier than an actual blade, which emphasises the delicacy of the real blades—used mostly for practices, but Kaoru fights with them.

4 Sakabatou -- reverse-blade katana, no, this did not actually exist before Nobuhiro Watsuki invent them. I'm taking poetic license—don't sue me.

5 Katana – Japanese curved, one-edged sword, usually about 70 cm in length, usually those that were worn blade-up through the belt-sash

6 Suburito – intentionally heavier bokken, made for kata-practice (suburi single cutting). Due to its' weight, it's not suitable for sparring practice because it's kind of off-balance and instantly a disadvantage.

7 Hazuki—September 8 to October 7. Kenshin and Kaoru were both born in Satsuki, in summer. The Japanese used to use the lunar calendar instead of the Gregorian and they have thirteen months, so while Satsuki refers to the fifth month, it is actually June in Gregorian calendar.


	4. Tentative Soul Searching

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

03: Tentative Soul-Searching

_"He hears."_

_He turned to face her, his face drawn. "A harsh gift. I had hoped—"_

_She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "So I had hoped."_

"_There's nothing we can do, short of killing the growth of his magic. How is he taking it?" The tiger-eyes were glum, dark murky earth so deep it was nearly black._

_She shrugged listlessly. "He knows he could talk to us."_

"_When he decides to divulge to us that his vocabulary does indeed extend beyond 'Okaa-sama', 'Otou-sama', and 'Mou!'" She swatted at him lightly, and he chuckled, catching her hand and hugging her. "Himeccha, at least he has us."_

"_Aa,"_

_They weren't so lucky early in their lives. The undertone murmuring of spirits ever present around them, swirling low in the stories of their woes and worries. The dawn approached like a thief, the night birds sang their goodbyes._

_The wind chime tinkled lightly, the scent of spring wafted out of season in the breeze.

* * *

_

"He's fine." Being sealed away, it seems, had not changed that tendency to quietly worry over everything, though he admitted the situation might call for it.

"How can we be sure?"

Hisui tossed her a slight glare. "There's no such thing as surety in this world, you know that. But he will make his way to you, and I expect it won't be long. Have patience."

Her face was calm, and her poise still. But the white clenching fingers belied her turmoil, as did the storm brewing in her eyes. She had the look of someone who had spent her night awake, as well.

He frowned disapprovingly.

"Worry all you want," Hisui grasped her hands and firmly unclenched them, gentle to contradict his cold words, but gave no pretence of a choice, "but if you're going to compromise your health, I'm going to have a bone to pick. Just so we're clear on that."

"I know." Her voice was tremulous and he bit the inside of his cheek. The mind can decide whatever it wants, but…

But the heart was never theirs to rule.

* * *

Soujirou watched, intrigued, as Keiji-kun promptly woke in the dead of the morning and started swinging his shinai. The boy made very little sound, and he had tactfully retreated a distance away so that his practice would not bother Soujirou. 

He had watched as playful innocence melted away from that young sweet face to be replaced by incredible focus, watched as the boy planted himself into a stance and worked on his basics, and admired the intense concentration such a young child could dedicate into a very boring practice.

Keeping count, he found that the boy switched position every three hundred strokes, but worked up only to one thousand swings, most of which were perfect. When he was finished with his one thousand swings, the boy did a number of simple combinations to cool off, slowing down accordingly until the last set of movements was done at snail pace.

Whoever taught this boy was very, very thorough.

"Did Keiji wake you up, Sou-nii?"

Surprised, Soujirou lost his footing on the tree-branch he had been perched on and it was only quick reflex that saved him from landing headfirst on the ground. "K-Keiji-kun, did you hear me?"

"Keiji knew Sou-nii was watching," the boy had slung his shinai onto his back and was retrieving his wide bamboo hat. "But not for how long." The wide-eyed cheer was back on his face, honest and open. "Did Keiji wake Sou-nii?"

"No, Keiji-kun. I was already awake when you left. How did you know I was watching?" He had carefully toned down his ki to mask his presence, so just how had Keiji-kun managed to find him out?

"Un, Keiji usually knows when somebody is watching; Orgulla-ba-sama(1) taught Keiji how to. And Sou-nii is troubled, so it's easy to know."

This boy hid enough surprises to give a man a heart attack. Soujirou leaned back against the tree he was perched on and slowly slid to the ground, the strength in his knees gone. It took him years. _Years_ of practice before he could reliably sense ki, and this child managed it in half a year? Just what kind of genius was hiding behind that innocent cheerfulness? "H-how?"

Keiji-kun dropped to kneeling on his toes. "Sou-nii is troubled, and it brought a cloud of black doubt. What is Sou-nii searching for?"

What was he searching for?

"Truth." He croaked. "I am searching for truth. I thought I had it, but I didn't. Who was right? Shishio-san or Himura-san?" He was babbling, and to a child, no less. "Shishio-san said the world only cares about strength, that the strong eat the weak. Himura-san said the strong must protect the weak, but…"

"No one protected you. Is that it?"

Slowly, he nodded.

Keiji-kun sighed. "Human truth. That is not something that is easy to understand. What this Shishio-san and Himura-san said is each _their_ truth. Who is Seta Soujirou?"

Soujirou blinked in surprise. "Me?"

"Who is Shishio-san?"

"Shishio-san? Shishio-san is… Shishio-san." How does one explain to a child anyway?

"And who is Himura-san?"

Blink. "Himura-san is… an… uh..."

Keiji-kun laughed. "Let Keiji make this simpler. Are either of them _you_, Sou-nii."

"Um, no?" Where was this going? Of course he was neither Shishio-san nor Himura-san.

"Then what is true for either of them does not necessarily apply to you, Sou-nii."

… Huh?

"Otou-sama said that there is always more than one truth. That the strong has the strength to take advantage of the weak is truth. However, that does not necessarily mean that the strong _has _to take advantage of the weak; the strong always have the _choice_ to protect the weak instead. This is also truth. Do you understand it yet, Sou-nii?"

"… No?"

Keiji-kun laughed; a glass-bell chime in the wind. "That's alright. We have time."

* * *

Keiji pondered, briefly, what his father would have done to 'knock some sense into clueless, confused people'. His parents were the patient, subtle, laidback sort. Most of the time, that was; some people could not help but try their patience immediately. 

And as forgiving as otou-sama usually was involving slights toward himself, he would always pull a one-eighty every time anyone as much as insinuated an insult toward okaa-sama and get extremely vindictive—so Heaven help those fools—so Grandpa Hisui proclaimed.

Seta Soujirou's world had been built on a castle on the sand called faith, until the tide called Himura Kenshin had come in and swept it clean. It was almost cruel, though he was certain Himura-san didn't meant to do anything remotely cruel. It wasn't even really a bad thing; it seemed that a part of Seta Soujirou had always doubted his own truth, and it was the weak link of the sand castle.

The stumbling search for truth was never easy. It was all too tempting to become lost in someone else's road, easier to do so, when the path one really should walk was overgrown with the unknown—a trodden path was always the easiest choice.

All too easy to forget that no one can live someone else's life. Especially to someone who had lost his sense of self like Seta Soujirou; drifting on the wild sea without anchor, tossed about by uncaring waves. At the very least, he was not angry that the pillar of his existence had been swept out from under him. Angry people always had a problem listening.

Keiji wanted to help, and for that, this lost puppy must first follow him home.

Humming happily under his breath, he skipped over a couple of puddles. Soujirou was looking amused at his antics, his smile gentle and real. That was encouraging.

They had made good time, considering, and if they did not meet any delay, another three days would bring them to the general area of Tokyo; from there it was simple matter of locating the dojo.

"Otou-sama once said, Sou-nii, that the beaten path is the easiest to travel, but it doesn't necessarily take you to where you need to go." Keiji commented, reflectively. "It is the same thing, with life. It is easy to become lost in other roads when we cannot see our own."

He was greeted with silence, but Keiji was not really waiting for a response anyway. He skipped over a few more puddles.

* * *

Keiji-kun gave him an answer. 

Now it left him to ponder just what that answer was.

His decision to wander had been heavily influenced by the fact that Himura-san had wandered ten years to find his answer, but he wondered, deep down, was it really necessary to wander for five years, if even at all?

In the past two years, he had met a lot of people, some nice, some not, some nastier than his so-called-family. Regardless, he still was no closer to the answer he was searching for since the day he had taken up wandering.

Did he regret killing the family that had treated him like a slave? He told Shishio he didn't, but maybe he did. But he hadn't been thinking when he did what he did, and he had carefully avoided thinking about it whenever his mind wandered in that direction.

Himura-san said that being the stronger didn't meant being right. It had confused Soujirou until he met an old man by the sea, white as cotton cloud and brittle as glass. The old man had given him a question that answered him.

If a strong man said that the sun sets in the east, does that mean he was right?

Soujirou had said that it was absurd, that such common knowledge cannot possibly be challenged. Besides, how does common knowledge rate against questions of life?

The old man had countered him by showing him that a person can say anything; anything that they believed and anything they didn't. It was the same thing. That a person says it was right does not mean it was. The same thing answered his question, whether it was about life, or everyday facts.

That Shishio-san wasn't right does not mean Himura-san was. But Soujirou liked Himura-san's answer a little better. However, Soujirou was not Himura-san, and Himura-san's answer does not necessarily mean Soujirou's.

That was what Keiji-kun was telling him, he realized. Another in the same message was that he as a person must search for his own answer, for while others might guide him, ultimately his answers must be his own.

Keiji-kun turned and smiled at him, and Soujirou was startled to realize that he had been staring down at the child walking alongside him, and that the sky had turned from cerulean to warm reddish orange.

"It's a nice sunset, Sou-nii." Keiji-kun chirped, but there was a subdued relaxation in the young voice. "Why don't we find a place to sit and watch it go down?"

"Aa… let's." In the warmly coloured evening, Keiji-kun's smile was interposed by the smile of the old man by the sea; calm, delicate, impenetrable, gentle, perhaps gracious, perhaps mocking, or a thin line between the two.

So they sat and watched the sun set, turning the sky into an instant of bloody sea, then darkening into the soft purple of Himura-san's eyes before settling into the solid blue-black dusk of the night. All the while the smile stayed on Keiji-kun's face, at odds with itself; an old man's smile in an infant's face, the meaning that was everything and nothing.

* * *

Knowledge can be taught, wisdom can't. Yet, wisdom was an illusion. The very wise were most often the very foolish, so Keiji learned. 

He would never call himself wise.

He would love to always be foolish.

There was nothing wrong in what Soujirou had done, because right and wrong were also illusions of the world, the distinction humankind drew in their need to explain everything they see around them. Truth was never a definite thing.

But humankind needed to believe otherwise, and so they would never admit it.

Keiji regarded his fellow human with more affection, perhaps, than his attitude admitted. So his parents had done. But more often than not he never ceased to be astonished by them, the way they could be so fragile and so strong, so kind and so cruel, casually, indifferently so.

There was an agreed stereotype of what makes a good man. But what _was_ a good man? A kind man? A generous man? A man who does not kill?

A man was a man; they were born neither wholly good nor evil, as potential for each side of the coin was always present. They could always be one or another or both, and turnaround was always possible.

But good and evil, just as right or wrong, was an illusion.

Truth can always be challenged, for the world offers nothing definite but evanescence. But the Wheel of Life turns, and deaths were not final. Prevalence of choices were always overlooked, but they were the dominant force within this world, where every man can affect the world and in turn was affected by it—though there were never surety that this relationship ever made a difference.

A stone that is thrown into a pond may make only a ripple, but when that ripple disappeared, the stone is within the pond, not where it was before it was thrown.

So it was with the world.

If Soujirou were looking for an unshakable set of principles that defined the great question of life and the world, he was fresh out of luck, because there were none.

Here, he was divided.

Was it mercy to let him believe that there _was_ an answer and letting him continue his merry way, or was it mercy to sit him down and take a sledgehammer to everything he had ever believed in?

His guardians had spoken to him about this dilemma; he had not believed it. Shows how much _he_ knows.

As they sat before the fire in a brooding quiet, crickets chirping in the distance, he drummed his fingers into the earth in a beat of three-in-four and a Chopin's Waltz. Soujirou's face was pensive, his smile absent, and for once he was too caught up in his own thoughts to watch what Keiji was doing.

Truth for truth; nothing in the world was absolute. What someone needs wasn't necessarily the facts of life, and truth was always a double-edged sword—it cuts you as it cuts your enemy. But was the world not a paradox?

There were things that people need to be unaware of in order to stay sane. That was why the search for truth always was perilous ground.

Lie by omission still means a lie.

Nevertheless, perhaps, Soujirou didn't have to know everything. That would probably be the best, even. It was not like Keiji had any plan to be teaching his personal belief to the world or something; there were enough religions to confuse people. Besides, it didn't really matter; the difference in opinions was what made them human.

And not dolls on strings.

With that thought lingering on his mind, Keiji settled down to sleep; he had an early day tomorrow.

* * *

Soujirou blinked, wondering just who had he managed to offend to fall into this kind of situation, and if Keiji-kun's low grumbles were any indicator, so did the boy. 

"Of all things," the boy muttered under his breath, so low it was almost a hum. "This is… not good."

"It isn't." Soujirou agreed.

They were carefully backing away from a large sow bear only to find out that they had backed right into another one. Right then they were cornered, back-to-back with a steep cliff, surrounded by a semi-circle of bears.

Most would think that bears were easier to run from than humans, but that wasn't really the case. Animals had sharper, more defined reflexes compared to humans. And there was also the fact that these particular bears just… had… cubs.

Recipe for disaster, undoubtedly.

"Hey, Sou-nii… Why do these bears nest so near to the road? Don't they usually prefer quieter grounds?"

They do, which meant something was disturbing them enough to drive them down close to the road. "They do, Keiji-kun."

A slight exasperated hiss, "Keiji doesn't like the sound of that."

"Sou-nii doesn't either."

Nervous eyes darted around for possible escape routes. They could not jump up the cliff, that meant the only other way was to jump over the bears—but they were tall, big bears, and god-speed or not, Soujirou wasn't sure he could pass safely. He had abandoned his spare katana in his early wandering days, figuring that bringing it around while it was prohibited would call attention to him faster than Kamatari in his most dramatic mode, besides which, he could always run.

Now he sincerely wished he had taken the pain of concealing the thing and keeping it with him.

Keiji-kun nudged him. "The second on the left is on the verge of moving, and when it does the rest will follow. That will create a gap for us to run through, but wait until the foremost make a move to get us. I'll hit it, you grab me and start running."

Soujirou nodded; a little disconcerted by the way the little boy had taken command of the situation, as well as the complete change in attitude. The boy's childish way of referring to himself in third person had disappeared with the appearance of the hard, calculating look in those tiger-hued eyes—now particularly dark greyish brown—and the tightly controlled power in the set of his shoulder and the hand ready at the hilt of his shinai.

So they waited.

A bead of sweat trickled down Soujirou's face, the tensely coiling spring of anticipation giving his muscles the beginning of a mild burn. He blinked when he realized that Keiji-kun had drawn the shinai and held it in front of him in a two-handed grip—he didn't see it happening, and apparently, neither did the bears, considering that they would have attacked if they had noticed the bamboo sword being drawn.

As he marvelled at this show of skill, Keiji-kun's prediction came to fruition with agonizing slowness.

The second bear from the left lumbered forward, and the other followed; it created the gap Keiji-kun had predicted, but it was small, and the bears were cautious. So they kept waiting.

When the bear finally lunged forward, Soujirou had to keep himself from lunging forward too soon, waiting until the boy delivered a dazzling, powerful smack that threw the bear to the ground before snatching up the child and started running for their lives, missing bear-claws by a close few inches.

Too close for his liking, that was. And when they tumbled down a hill to rest under an early blossoming wild yamazakura(2), they lay there, Soujirou gasping with fairly throbbing feet, and Keiji-kun flat on his back with swirling eyes—apparently, speed made the boy dizzy.

"Let's not do that again in a hurry, Sou-nii." The child mumbled, still dazed and dizzy.

Soujirou gasped for breath a few more moments before grumbling back, "Let's not do that again _ever_, Keiji-kun, if we can help it." His legs agreed with him, muscles protesting much abuse. He had had to run away quickly during his wandering time, occasionally, but never like this. Groaning, he let himself go boneless. If he never had to get on his feet again, it would be too soon.

He must have fallen asleep where he fell, because next thing he was aware of was wet cloth against his aching feet, and somebody laughing like tinkling glass bells as he sighed in blissful pleasure. Mumbling incoherently, he wondered who was it that was being so very kind. Yumi-san usually didn't spend much time looking after him, much less going through the trouble of giving him compresses for sore feet, and Yumi-san didn't laugh like glass bells, her laughs were velvet.

Anji might take the trouble, but Anji didn't laugh like that either, if he even laughed.

Who might it be? Perhaps he could find out tomorrow…

Mumbling a sleepy gratitude, he was rewarded by another peal of glass bells, underlined by dark silk; a contradiction that fit together like Shishio-san and Yumi-san.

He wondered, briefly, what a normal family was like, and what would it have felt like to have one. His mother had died very early, and all Soujirou remembered of her was the scent of aged oak and sake. His so-called benefactors weren't family, he knew that much. What was a real family like?

He wanted one.

* * *

Keiji sighed and wiped at the sweat beading his brow, surreptitiously juggling the nuts and fruits he gathered in one arm as he collected firewood. Soujirou would be hungry when he woke; and since it was partly Keiji's responsibility they had needed to run like hell's hounds were nipping at their ankles, he felt it was his duty to see to dinner today. 

It was a setback, and they might need a week to reach Tokyo, after all. But it was a valuable lesson to him—one should never be lulled into complacence by the illusion of things working, as they should, smoothly, until the goal was achieved.

He had run down to a signpost tree(3), and had written a message for the nearest Exorcist Household about the bears. Somebody had to see that the disturbance that drove the bears away from their natural habitat be dealt with before other people fell afoul of the bears and their cubs—that could be natural disaster in the making; bears were rare as they were, if the villagers and townsfolk got it into their head that they need to wage war against the bears…

Keiji hoped, sincerely, that it would never come to that.

When the young man awoke, he would doubtless have questions. Keiji knew he had been careless; four-year olds do not have enough logic not to panic while being attacked by bears, nor do they have enough logic to reason out a good way to run off without getting mauled. Four year olds do not know how to properly smack around things bigger than they were without getting hit first either, not most of the time.

In fact, even having the memories of three lifetimes didn't tell him these things; he learned them from his one very capable aunt and one sarcastically humorous, extremely knowledgeable god-grandfather.

Could he please have a nice boulder to hit his head against?

Somebody up there must be laughing at him, he knew it.

Depressed, he made his way back into their camping spot along with the setting sun, started a fire and roasted the nuts. There was a river along the way, and he had wished sincerely that he had brought a sharpened stick with him to spear fishes with—that is, if he remembered how Aunt Orgulla did it.

Soujirou stirred as the nuts were done. "Keiji… kun?"

"Were you expecting someone else, Sou-nii?"

The Tenken sat up slowly, looking left and right. "It's dark already," he commented almost inanely.

"Indeed." Keiji tossed him some of the fruits, then offered the roasted nuts as well. "Keiji can't fish, or trap animals, so tonight we have to do without. Keiji hopes Sou-nii doesn't mind."

"I don't."

Warily, the boy watched the quiet man from across the fire, waiting to face the music.

* * *

Keiji-kun's eyes changed with his mood, Soujirou observed inanely as he nibbled on spring fruit. This night, in the light of the fire they were the brown of autumn leaves, dark and cloudy. 

While happy, those eyes turned very green, almost the green of summer forest; when serious, like the time facing the bears, they were the sharply coloured dark eyes of a predator, like a bird-of-prey. In the same line of thought, Soujirou wondered what colour would those eyes be like in mischief, contemplation, anger, or sadness?

"How?" _How did you know which bears were going to attack? How did you know how to react? How did you keep your wits? How did you hit that bear like that? How did you change so completely?_

He did not know how to say his questions out loud, but it seemed the child before him understood.

"We were a very old family."

Soujirou blinked in confusion, but the boy continued.

"While we walk alongside the people, we also walk along with the land and all in nature. Naturally, we learned from the earliest we could understand to love and fear nature. The worst thing you can do against a wild animal is panic; that my mother taught me. The worst thing you can do while you are outnumbered and outmatched is to attack them wildly; that my father told me. When you hit something bigger than you, take advantage of your opponent's weight against them; that my teacher showed me. If you don't see an opportunity, create it; that my grandfather mandated. I listened, and that I listened served me well."

The disappearance of the third person way of talking made Soujirou listen, and listen intently. "You have good teachers."

"Among the best," Keiji-kun agreed softly. "I am blessed, and I never forget to be thankful. But you wonder, I do suppose, why do I talk differently at different times."

"That I do," Soujirou affirmed softly, gingerly cracking the roasted nuts.

For a while, the child was silent, but when Soujirou was wondering if he was going to answer, he did. "Among the very first things we learned was the danger of drawing attention to ourselves. Children my age do refer to themselves as third person most of the time, so I followed the habit. Obscurity served my family well, and will continue to do so for a very long while. Do you understand now?"

"Ah," there was a deeper story Soujirou could sense lying behind the explanation. But what the boy had said was enough for him. Keiji-kun had not asked for his past, had not dug with that children's curiosity, almost like he didn't care about Soujirou's past. And he could never decide whether it was simply children's naïve trust or that Keiji-kun really did not care about Soujirou's past and sins.

He would have liked it to be the later one.

"Let's go to sleep." Keiji-kun suggested, "We have a way still to go—and we never know just who might be listening, so Keiji shall go first."

He nodded amiably, and was happy to see a smile and hear a tinkling glass bell giggle before the boy lay down on the ground and promptly fell asleep.

Keiji-kun had been as honest with him as the boy had dared to, and even that took an extreme amount of trust Soujirou sensed was not easily bestowed—Keiji-kun was not so innocent, after all. But Soujirou could not bring himself to be angry against that early deception, especially if it had been done against just about everyone, and not just him alone—as he sensed was the case.

Smiling gently, he cast a fond glance at the sleeping child. He would miss the boy when they parted ways, and Soujirou was thinking that he might settle down in Tokyo, if he could.

It sounded like a nice dream.

Not warm but not cold,

this changing weather

of spring.

* * *

Author Note: 

-Sou is too cute for his own good. While I never kick puppies, it does make me want to pick on him. Keiji, while he does act cute, is really not so cute in actuality. When one considers that all his innocence is carefully contrived he quickly falls out of favour.

-I have only one thing to say about this chapter; credit goes to Herman Hesse "Siddharta" and other random philosophers

-It might sounds terribly careless for Sou to be passing out in the open, but an experienced fighter like the Tenken should be able to manage a constant sensor on their surroundings even when they're napping. Keiji slipped under the radar because he made sure he was as non-threatening as possible.

* * *

1 Orgulla-ba-sama -- really means "Aunt Orgulla", if the "a" of the "ba" is stretched, then it became granny. 

2Wild yamazakura -- Wild cherry blossom, the cultivars of yamazakura came from this species.

3 Signpost Tree – no, this is nothing with Japanese culture. The idea of a signpost tree is a commonly-found type where directions and messages were left, and whichever family is responsible for the area will routinely check on the trees. It's like the message board we can find in stations, and a mailbox.


	5. Approaching, Deep Dive

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

04: Approaching, Deep Dive

_She flung the small vase at him in utter irritation. "Worrying about you is a lost cause!"_

"_I know," he soothed her gently. "But you still worry, the heart is never ours to rule, after all." Putting down the pottery he caught, he went over to her and gently enfolded her in a reassuring hug. "I'm sorry to make you worry."_

"_Don't." She replied harshly. "Given another choice, you'd still have done the same thing."_

_He chuckled, "You know me, Himeccha(1). Come on, smile for me?"_

_Despite her best effort, she smiled.

* * *

_

Yahiko woke early that morning to the chirping of the birds and the almost unearthly quiet the dojo had settled into since he found out about Kaoru's son. He had tiptoed carefully around his sensei; knowing that she was as uncollected as she had ever been and her temper would be haphazard.

It made him realize just how much hidden potential and concealed power there was in the slight frame of this Shihandai of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu, potential that even she might not be aware of, herself, that she was gradually finding out. Not that he hadn't been told about it before—Kenshin's sensei was as blunt as sledgehammer.

The man had asked where she was when he was looking for a successor. Kaoru had wittily informed him that he was too impatient to wait until she was born, so he had had to settle with Kenshin—not, she had added, that she thought Kenshin was a bad choice at all.

Yahiko chuckled softly. He idolized Kenshin nearly to the point of worshipping the ex-hitokiri, but sometimes he wondered if the man's dumbness were real after all. He was sharp enough on the battlefield, but something Hiko and Kaoru had both said…

Well, it made Yahiko wondered.

He had found, also, that he was looking forward to know Keiji, once the boy had been found—he refused that it could be otherwise, someone needs to hold on to hope. Kaoru was desperately grasping any hope she could, but she was a mother, and mothers tends to visualize all sort of things that they loses sleep over. Yahiko could see that she had not been sleeping well, lately. He had never known when exactly does she go to sleep or wake up, but she usually was always fresh in the morning.

She looked depressed, tired, anxious and ready to drop this last few days, even the Wolf got worried.

That was certainly something he had never seen coming; Saitou Hajime and Kamiya Kaoru weren't friend in the traditional sense, but there was a certain rancour between them that told him they would have no problem guarding each other's back were the situation to call for it.

It had gone beyond that, even, and to Saitou Tokio and Eiji's delight—and Sano's horror and Kenshin's mild trepidation—the Wolf and Raccoon had became friendly enough to banteringly needle each other, without any fear of repercussion. Just yesterday, the Wolf had covertly asked what was wrong and if he could do anything to help.

The sight of his face when he had found out about Kaoru's son would have send Yahiko to laughter, if he had not valued his life too much. Tae and Maekawa-sensei came and tried to console her—apparently, they knew about Keiji, and the reason he was not with them—to little avail.

Nevertheless, Yahiko knew this could not continue. Already Kaoru looked gaunt, her usual poise not gone, but strained by anxious energy almost graver than a graveyard. She also spent a lot of time staring at the cluster of old sakura trees in the backyard—intriguing collection, Yahiko always wanted to ask, but for some reason, it always slipped his mind—that couldn't be healthy.

Today would be a full week since that fateful day, and Yahiko resolved that he would drag Kaoru out of the house, maybe to Akabeko, anything but letting her brood through another day. With that resolve firmly in mind, he made up his room and stalked to the kitchen to make breakfast—someone need to force Kaoru to eat, and she uses the fact that she couldn't cook to cover up her lack of appetites.

Before he could get to the kitchen, however, someone knocked on the front gate, and frowning, Yahiko went to open it. _This better not be some stupid peddler, they're bad enough on good days. Kaoru might fry them alive in this kind of day._

But it was a little boy with cheerful face and tiger-hued eyes trailed by a young man with an unwavering smile.

"Good morning," the little boy chirped brightly. "Is Kamiya Kaoru available?"

Yahiko blinked, "Er… huh? Why are you looking for the shihandai this early in the morning, kid? Want to learn Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu?"

"Eventually," the boy informed him perkily. "But Keiji needs to talk to the shihandai. This is important, and she is usually up before dawn even if she pretends otherwise. May we come in?"

Keiji?

_Keiji?_

_Keiji!_

Kaoru's son! The first disciple of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu gawked ungracefully, mouth working a couple of time without a sound. Tiny kid, cutely adorable, with Kaoru's hair; the eyes must have come from the father, then, those curiously bright, shifting-hued orbs…

"You _brat!_" Yahiko exploded. "Do you know how worried your mother get? In! Now!" The boy scuttled in, and Yahiko glared at the young man looking like a deer that might bolt at any moment. "You too!" He got a gulp and a hurried obeisance.

Both of them watched him warily as he showed them to the dojo and stomped out to get Kaoru, muttering under his breath about apparently runaway kids and stupid people that helps them.

* * *

"Runaway?" Soujirou's strained whisper reached Keiji's ear, and the boy grimaced.

"Otou-sama… well, that was way over two years ago. Okaa-sama wasn't… reacting very well, so they had to put me under their best friend's custody. She's gotten better, though, and missed me. And I… well, I wanted to go home. I would have got home eventually," he paused, voice very small when he continued. "But I didn't want to wait any longer."

Sitting back on his heel, Soujirou nodded to himself. So that was why Keiji-kun had been travelling alone, and also why he did not tell Soujirou his family name. It made sense, and when it comes down to it, he really couldn't blame the boy.

"Three months," the boy whispered. "Three months since she asked me to return. I have waited long enough."

What could he say to that, pray tell? "I understand."

* * *

Kaoru was staring at him dazedly, and he had had to repeat himself twice before suddenly finding himself talking to empty air, and blinked. _Hiko was right._

Shaking his head ruefully, Yahiko trotted back to the dojo.

* * *

"_Keiji!_" Soujirou turned to the woman's voice as Keiji-kun bolted from his side, and was momentarily taken aback by the sight of the person who must have been Keiji-kun's mother.

She was beautiful, even as haggard-looking as she was—worry had eaten at her, he saw—pale porcelain skin, delicate face and the most arresting dark blue eyes framed by long, dainty eyelashes bright with suppressed tears.

When they reached each other, the woman went down to her knees and caught the little boy in a tight embrace, white hands clenching on the back of the child's gi. Keiji-kun, for his part, buried his head against his mother, small hands holding fistfuls of the pale purple kimono.

She pulled back after a moment, stroking the child's face. "Oh, musuko(2), don't do that to me again. When Orgulla's letter came, I thought my heart would stop. But you're fine. Yokatta(3)…" Her voice trembled, and for a moment Soujirou found himself envying the boy.

Apparently, this response was more than even Keiji-kun expected, because from his vantage point Soujirou could saw the stunned wonder in that young face, then the boy did something that threw him off-balance; his face scrunched, then with a little shout threw himself against his mother, arms around her neck and holding tight, teary sobs loud in the still morning air.

The mother merely tightened her arms around her little boy, burying her face in the inky black hair. Soujirou sat back on his heel and smiled with all sincerity.

* * *

Yahiko grinned as he leaned against a dojo post and watched the reunion. It was a big relief; now that Keiji's here, Kaoru wouldn't be strung tighter than a bow ready to shoot. Her in that mood was a singularly frightening experience.

It doesn't hurt that the kid was cuter than a kitten, too. He could already see Ayame, Suzume, and the weasel girl cooing around the child until he was sick of them, and that vision made him grin wider. Poor kid.

On the other hand, he was itching to see the little boy handling that shinai hanging on his back—almost as tall as him—it will be good to have a fellow to measure himself up against. Yutaro might say he was coming back, but so far the half-gaijin hadn't show hide or hair.

The other guy made him curious, too. There was something in his carriage that practically screamed quite a bit of skill, and Yahiko had a niggling suspicion that, given the right motivation, the smiling man could be very, very dangerous.

His grin settled into a speculative smile; if nothing else, no one can say that life in Kamiya Dojo was ever boring.

* * *

He knew, since the beginning, that he missed his mother. He just never fully realized the extent of _how much_ he missed her, not until her arms were around him again, until the warm jasmine that was his mother enclosed him again.

He was home, and all's right with the world.

"You've grown so big." Okaa-sama's voice had steadied, and he swallowed a small smile. A trace of wonder, a little pain in that steady melodic thrum that was his mother's most beloved voice; Keiji burned to erase that pain, but there was nothing he could really do. "It has been so long." She whispered. "_So_ long… Keiji, I missed you so much."

He tightened his hold, trying to tell her without word that he missed her too, that he didn't blame her at all, that her choices were for the best, and knew that it was inadequate. But there were other times to talk.

Finally, she loosened her hold, let go, and sat back on her heels. "But I do think that your sense of responsibility needs some work. Come, we must talk."

He gulped. That was coming, he knew, and hardly undeserved. Nevertheless, he was not looking forward to it.

Aunt Orgulla warned him, once, that his mother was _very_ good in guilt tripping. No, he was definitely not looking forward to it.

"Yes, Okaa-sama."

Meek, he followed her. A lamb to the slaughter.

* * *

Soujirou and Yahiko had quickly introduced themselves and were perched before the slightly opened shoji of the room Kaoru and Keiji had disappeared to, about as tense as the child kneeling before his mother.

Kaoru pulled out the crinkled letter Orgulla had send through kamidori and placed it between them. When she finally opened her mouth, her tone was flat and even she might have been commenting on the weather.

"This is from Orgulla when she found you were missing."

Keiji was wincing when he read it.

"The city was in red alert."

Soujirou and Yahiko could practically saw the big stone labelled 'selfish' being dropped on the boy's head.

"Every able personnel were deployed to find you."

Another wince, another proverbial stone dropping on his head.

"Orgulla was frantic."

This time, Yahiko and Soujirou could not help but winced in sympathy with the boy currently being guilt tripped to within an inch of his life.

"She was crying."

Keiji grimaced deeply. "I'm sorry."

"You're saying that to the wrong person." His mother returned breezily. "And I'll tell you now that there's a very frantic woman a couple of oceans away that is very worried whether something had managed to slink its' way into her house and gobble up her ward."

Keiji turned red, then pale. "Can we send word?"

"Indeed, you will. Go write, I shall teach you to send it by kamidori when you are finished." She rose gracefully to her feet. "Flesh as well as spirit. Think of consequences, Keiji. Now I must go apologize to the young man you dragged here."

Yahiko and Soujirou looked at each other and promptly bolted back to the dojo, trying their best to be silent and failing miserably.

Kaoru sighed and shook her head. "Children…"

Keiji snickered and went off in search of paper.

* * *

When Kaoru returned to where she had originally left her other guest, she had found both the young man and Yahiko sitting nervously, and smiled. "Forgive my manners, young gentleman. I had been remiss."

Soujirou blushed, "N-not at all… under the circumstances, it is very understandable."

"You are too kind, young sir." Kaoru demurred, and Soujirou blushed harder. Yahiko stifled a guffaw. "Will you let me have your name?"

"Ah," Soujirou wavered; he had avoided using his full name since he started wandering, but like with Keiji, there was something in this woman that demanded more than banality. "Seta Soujirou."

Kaoru stared at her guest a bit before it clicked in her mind just why did Keiji dragged him all the way here. "The Tenken." Beside them, Yahiko started and got to his feet, remembering Sanosuke's story about the people Kenshin fought in Shishio's Headquarter.

Soujirou blanched. "Ah, I…" He made to rise when the woman before him waved a hand that commanded both he and the spiky-haired youth to sit down, and sit still. How had she known? Had he finally compromised himself?

Soujirou never had fear of going into jail; it was hardly something he didn't deserve, but somehow the thought that he would never again see the cheerful, mysterious boy who was this woman's son hurts. His smile was strained, and he desperately tried to smooth the trembling edges.

Yahiko was wary. Soujirou, if Sanosuke was right, was as fast, if not faster, than Kenshin, and if he took it into his mind to do something to them now that Kenshin wasn't at place they have very little defence. Oh, but he most certainly wish he had thought to get his shinai earlier, though how much help that might be, he wasn't sure.

"Please, do not be alarmed." Kaoru commented breezily. "I have no intention of turning you in." She gestured sharply to Yahiko to make him shut up. "I owe you Keiji's safety, Seta-san, and I do believe people deserves second chances." Her smile was gentle and mysterious and old. "Yahiko," she turned to her apprentice. "If you will be so kind as to start breakfast and boil a kettle of water for tea, it will be greatly appreciated."

Yahiko frowned; his sensei was sending him away. How could he leave her with that smiling… "If you aren't afraid that breakfast could be ruined." _Are you sure?_

"It will be fine." _I am, now get._

Giving the confusedly smiling man a warning glare, Yahiko went out.

Kaoru smiled comfortingly at the nervous, slightly twitchy swordsman in front of her. "Keiji told me that you helped him come down here from Kyoto on foot. Allow me to apologize in my son's behalf for dragging you around."

"N-no," Soujirou mumbled. "I was thinking of visiting an acquaintance here in Tokyo anyway, so it was not that much of a trouble."

"Indeed? That is a delightful coincidence, that it is. But you must be exhausted, do you have a place to stay in Tokyo?"

"No, but it's no problem, I'm accustomed to sleep outside."

Kaoru widened her eyes and faked her gasp. "Oh, but that would not do at all! We have space enough for you here, Seta-san. Why don't you stay with us while you are in Tokyo? It is the least I could do to thank you for bringing my son to me."

Soujirou's strained smile was replaced by a shocked look. "But- you- you know who I am, why would you want me in your house? I am-"

"Was." The shihandai declared firmly. "I owe you my son's safety, so let me repay your kindness."

"But you owe me nothing at all! It was the least I could do!"

Oh, young man, Kaoru thought sadly, _has no one cared for you before_? "But I do." She said firmly. "And as long as you are on my grounds you have my protection. No harm will come to you here."

"But-" his mind whirling, Soujirou was having trouble stringing two thought together. This woman knew who he was, and cared not a jot for it, was this trust what Keiji-kun inherited from her?

"Allow me, Seta-san." She countered firmly. "If Keiji trusts you, so do I, and I do not believe our trust is misplaced." She smiled again, that old, mysterious smile. "_Will_ you harm us, Seta-san?"

Soujirou's eyes widened. "Of course not!"

"Then what is there for me to worry about?"

Speechless, Soujirou stared at the beautiful, elegant, _undeniable_ woman. "Do you truly not care?"

"I believe in second chances, as I said." The woman returned tartly. "Besides, it is more convenient this way. Kenshin will return in a day or two. In the meanwhile, please make yourself at home."

Kenshin? Kenshin as in Himura-san? "H-himura-san?"

Kaoru tilted her head slightly in amusement. "He _is_ the acquaintance that you were going to visit, is he not?"

Oh, that was too much, too many coincidences all at once. Soujirou's mind blanked and he pitched forward in a dead faint.

* * *

Kaoru blinked at the prone form in front of her and poked. He twitched, but didn't wake. She chuckled slightly in amusement; so cute, she was very tempted to pinch him. Keiji brought him here to heal, that she realized, and silently pledged to help.

There were risks in taking him in, she knew. The government was _very_ interested in the young man currently unconscious in front of her when it had talked to the surviving members of the JupponGatana. And the nature of that interest was not healthy.

Silently, she cursed them; why could they not leave it alone? They had ruined so many youthful, idealistic innocent for their revolution. Was that not enough? How many more must they destroy?

She was almost in half a mind to-

No, don't think of that. Do _not_ go there at all.

"Okaa-sama?" Grateful for the interruption of her undesirable line of thought, she turned to find her son watching nervously from the door, holding a letter. When she nodded, he crossed over to her. "What happened to him?"

"Information overload," she replied dryly, holding out her hand and gestured for the letter so she could examine it. Keiji handed it over and went to make the unconscious man more comfortable.

Keiji's handwriting was very fine for his age, slightly shaky around the edges, but evenly spaced and nicely clear. Much better, she grimaced, compared to Kenshin's—ooh, she was very fond of that oro-ing swordsman, but his handwriting was bad enough to make her cry.

"Can we, okaa-sama?"

She lifted her eyes to watch her son, to find him watching the young man bearing the name Tenken, and smiled. "Aa, certainly." He grinned brightly at her, pleased as if he just had an early birthday present.

Kaoru smiled, then took her son to the engawa and proceed to teach him how to make a kamidori. As an assurance that the letter reached Orgulla post-haste, she stuck on a couple of extra speed charm on it, and let the letter flew. Keiji frowned adorably as he watched the procedure, biting his lower lip the way she does when she was thinking.

Sighing, she patted him on the head. "Go see if Yahiko is finished with breakfast. I will wake our guest."

"Un!"

* * *

The tatami was quite comfortable, Soujirou thought absently.

"Wake up, Seta-san, you're going to catch a cold if you sleep there."

But it's comfortable. He hadn't been so comfortable for a long while, and he wanted to keep himself in that comfortable cocoon for a little more while.

"Seta-san, if you don't wake up now, you're going to miss breakfast."

A missed breakfast or two wasn't a problem. He grunted slightly and curled in on himself.

"A futon would be more comfortable, Seta-san. And if you don't wake up now I'll sic Keiji and Yahiko on you."

Who? He blinked awake, finding himself curling on the floor of a dojo, a beautiful woman kneeling in front of him. Keiji, Kamiya dojo, invitation. He blinked again before righting himself. "Are you sure about letting me stay here, Kamiya-san?"

She laughed softly. "Mou! Seta-san, I may be many things I am not proud of; but I am not fickle. I said I am sure, so I am. Come, Keiji is anxious to find out if I had not feed you to the wolves."

He laughed shakily and rose as she did.

Following hesitantly, he studied the woman in front of him and the place she calls her domain, because even if she did not say it out loud, in these enclosure she ruled, a firm but gentle queen. He wondered how old she was; he could not place her any younger than her mid-thirties—that confident elegance and deep set power wouldn't let him—but for some reason he didn't think his estimates were anywhere near accurate.

She was, like her son, at the same time old and young, naïve but ancient—though not so much naïve than strangely trusting. But was it even that?

The dojo on the other hand, was much simpler. Worn but sturdy; Soujirou could see patches of repairs that had been done over the year. Good repairs, neither clashing nor compromising the original structure of the place. Lovingly maintained and well cleaned, this was a good place to live. It will be hard, when the time comes, to pick up his feet and leave it.

Clear glass bell laughter echoed easily from wherever the kitchen must be, Soujirou could not help but smiled. Dear, dear boy; was this what having little brothers feels like?

The glass bell laughter was joined with mellow, honeyed chuckles that Soujirou realized belatedly came from the woman walking in front of him, and absently he wandered what she was laughing about.

"Yes, I think so too. It's a good place to live."

Soujirou paused, one foot hovering above the ground as he gaped at the retreating back of the woman. "Am I that transparent?"

She waved a careless hand. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

_Gah_. He must have made an expression that betrayed his thought, because she laughed.

"Unlike your expression, your _ki_ is honest." Her voice was gentle and patient, a mother's voice if Soujirou had ever heard it. "Here is where we eat. I will show you around the house after breakfast." She turned to me, stopping in front of the door. "Yahiko will be slightly wary around you, but that cannot be helped at this point of time. I shall talk to him soon about it."

"Oh, no, please don't trouble yourself, Kamiya-san."

She tilted her head in amusement, and Soujirou knew that it didn't matter what he said, she will talk to the young man anyway. "Seta-san—"

"Please, call me Soujirou." He never cared so much, but being called Seta by this woman somehow made him slightly uncomfortable. His request earned him an unreadable gaze, endless cobalt depth ringed by slight cerulean grey. He knew there was no hiding from this woman, so he didn't try. Smile absent, he returned the trust mother and son both had given him and allow them to be his judge, jury, and executioner, all the while wondering what she saw in his own eyes.

Finally she closed her eyes, and it was like the settling of doom. But she opened them again, and the lightning of indigo in that cobalt depth spoke to him of brutal, total honesty. "Soujirou, then."

He had not been found lacking.

"Well, Sou-kun," she began, something like mischief flitting in her eyes and made him smile. "Shall we go in and see just what my apprentice had been cooking up that had my son in stitches?"

"Lead the way," Soujirou replied gamely, enjoying the banter. "It couldn't be any worse than _my_ cooking." It made her laugh. He decided that he likes her laughter, all warm mellow honey. Nevertheless, knowing of her acceptance no matter what he was did not prepared him for the way she turned around and slung her arms around his shoulders in a casual, warm embrace. His surprise allowed her to pull him into the kitchen and soon he was seated on the small table, chatting amiably with Keiji, drowning in the warmth of easy laughter and uncaring joy.

* * *

When Keiji had undertook to show Soujirou to his room instead of Kaoru, Yahiko spent no time in cornering his sensei. "What were you thinking?"

"Second chances, dear descendant of Tokyo Samurai. I gave them to you, to Sanosuke, to Aoshi. Why not him? Listen to this and listen well, Yahiko, but you don't turn away from someone as lost as that young man is."

"He's wanted by the government." The young apprentice pointed out mulishly.

"So is Sanosuke." His sensei parried. "I will talk with Saitou, and we'll see if we can't work something out. In the meanwhile, Yahiko, Sano tried to kill Kenshin once, why aren't you more antagonistic toward him? In fact, Aoshi tried to kill Kenshin too, and we drink tea with him."

Yahiko deflated. "I know," he muttered grudgingly. "Alright, I'll try my best to make him welcome, promise."

"Do that, and be kind. You are lucky, you know, compared to him. He had no one to teach him about life and family and feeling."

The reflective tone in Kaoru's voice perked up his interest. "Nee, Kaoru, are you thinking about asking him to stay, like, permanently?" Yahiko will always have reservations about everything, he convinced himself, because everyone else was too trusting. Nevertheless he had not felt anything hostile from the Tenken, and had no reason to suspect that possibility.

Yahiko trusts his instinct, and they were telling him to give the Tenken a chance—like Kaoru had given a little pickpocket a chance, all those years ago.

"Should I not?"

The final say was hers, and yet Kaoru will consider his opinion in the matter. That, he knew plainly. "I see no reason not to," he answered honestly. "But that will be your decision, right? Your son likes him, I think he will be devastated if Tenken leaves."

Kaoru chuckled. "Keiji? Maybe, but perhaps not for the reason we think of. What do you think?"

"Of your son? He's a doll; the girls will have him coddled until he's sick of it."

Kaoru laughed.

Yahiko smiled as he put away the last of the dishes; traces of the last week were being quickly washed away, ice sleet melting under the early spring sun.

* * *

Saitou Hajime stared almost uncomprehendingly at the small crowd gathered in the yard of Kamiya dojo. One or two, he could dismiss as coincidence, but this?

She started with Battousai, then acquired Zanza, after that she adopted that opium woman. If his memory hadn't been playing trick on him she was also of good relation with that two Oniwabanshu Okashira.

Now the Tenken? He was starting to think that she was running a charity house instead of a dojo. He'd bet that she lets the Tenken live there for free as well.

And whom was that little boy peering at him from behind her kimono? Her son he heard was missing just a couple of days ago? _Whose,_ for that matter?

Battousai would either faint dead away, or burst a blood vessel, because his woman had a son and it certainly wasn't his. Hajime found himself somewhat looking forward to find out.

His own wife, in the meanwhile, had rushed forward to coo over the little boy, who ducked his head shyly and smiled in a way that was going to get him mobbed. An edge of a smile kicked up the corner of his mouth, earning a raised eyebrow from the Raccoon.

Hajime didn't care just what his wife said. Battousai's woman was a raccoon when he met her, and a raccoon still. It wasn't an insult, despite Tokio's accusation. There were layers to this woman that were more numerous than an onion, darker than the dark side of the moon and more unpredictable than a thistle in the wind. Since the day he met her until now he had yet to be able to place her; the people around her were easy, it was only she who defies any attempt to put her in a box.

The Tenken was edgy, trying his best to hide in the spare shadow of the support beam, and failing miserably. Hajime didn't know what made him so nervous; it was not like he was going to get arrested when he was loitering around in the dojo. This place was almost like a sanctuary—until people trying to get the Battousai attack it.

Hajime admired strong people, but strength sometimes had nothing to do with the physical. His wife was one such, and the Raccoon, another. He was always curious to test the edge of his blade against Battousai's skill, but it really was too bad his spirit really weren't anywhere near his woman's level.

What's the point of fighting someone who didn't feel it necessary to win?

The Tenken, on reflection, was very much like a nervous hare, or a deer in the spotlight, and the ex-Shinsengumi captain turned policeman could not help but smirked wolfishly, earning a shadow of a nervous gulp and an attempt to press even more into what shade he could find.

Ah, ah. The Raccoon was giving him a warning look, shaking her head slightly. She had caught onto him very quick, and he wondered inanely if she would want a career with the police; they could use that sharp eye and mind.

It was good to see that she had gotten her bite back. It wasn't worth riling her otherwise.

"I see you've got yourself another stray." He began nonchalantly, watching as the Raccoon's son effortlessly charmed Tokio.

"Which one you're referring to, now?" she returned innocently.

Hajime smirked inwardly—she always gives as good as she gets. "Either, both."

"That one," she pointed to the little boy, "is my son, Keiji. Keiji, say hello to uncle Gorou. Fujita, be nice."

He grunted. The boy smiled brightly, undaunted by him at all. "Hello, nice to meet you, uncle Gorou." Oh, this one had spirit too, what could he be? Beside them, Tokio fairly squealed. Their children were grown; maybe she would like another little one?

"And the other one?" he ventured quietly as he watched the boy conversing animatedly with his wife.

"You know who that is, I think, more than I do." She returned. Good, so she understood that this was serious business.

"I almost prefer the one Battousai fought before," he snorted. "This one looks as scared as rabbit."

"Like you weren't helping that impression." She retorted with precision. "Do you think it's necessary, Saitou-san?"

Hajime shrugged, "Chief Uramura and I both turned blind eye to that Ahou's presence. But the Tenken—"

"Tenken who?"

He stared at the Raccoon, so _that's_ the way they're going to play it. "Indeed. No such thing, is there?"

Smart woman. She knew him well enough to know that he would found no pleasure in hunting down the Tenken as he was then. Much like the reason why he wanted to fight Battousai rather than the Rurouni, Hajime Saitou were never known to be doing things in any way other than his own, or for any reason other than his own, as well.

Personal opinion aside, while duty might demand he turn in the nervous young man, Saitou really didn't see any point in doing so—it was clear what the government wants him for, and while Okubo Tokimichi's death on the boy's hand was a blow to the government, Saitou didn't think there was any use of trying to make the Tenken work for them in exchange for freedom.

One, he could always run away—all that speed must be good for something. Two, he didn't think the Tenken would, or could, ever kill again.

This allows him to turn another blind eye, and if the nervous hare behaves, there would be no need to disturb that water.

Aku. Soku. Zan(4).

She understood him very well, it seems, and on that uneven ground, he shall concede her the victory.

He absently asked her if she would hide the brat and the hare until he could be there to see Battousai's reaction. She looked at him incredulously, and then laughed, drawing Tokio's confused look. He smirked and went to his wife, promising her that he would explain later.

Poor Battousai. Hajime almost pitied him. _Almost_ being the imperative word.

* * *

"Go on ahead, say it." Kaoru invited with an almost impish tone.

Hisui opened an eye from when he had closed it to savour the scent of the gyokuro(5) and sent her a slight look. "I told you so."

She smiled slightly and bent her head to her own steaming yunomi. He had half-expected the usual inward bristling, but it seemed that today her silence wasn't a reining in of temper, but genuine amusement and disregard in the wake of relief.

He hid a smile by raising the yunomi to his lips, sipping the tea and let it wash over his palette.

Many took her silence as weakness of will, but Hisui knew that it wasn't at all true. Disregard wasn't the same as passive acceptance—though he still thought she had too much of that passivity—and Kamiya Kaoru might be a willow, but she was also an ocean. A woman who will never break—they had tempered the steel of her soul too much for that to ever happen.

And it was their sin to simply watch her from the sidelines.

"Are you sure you won't come see Keiji?"

Hisui lowered the yunomi back to the matting. "I have met him earlier, but it was late and he was exhausted."

"Then stay another day."

"I must return to Kyoto tonight." He replied firmly.

They exchanged no pleasantry other than what the barest of good manners entails, and she said nothing more as he excused himself and left.

If he had been anyone else, he might have stayed to talk more with the little boy. But Hisui makes allowance for no one, not even himself. He had work to do.

The last of ice sleet had melted away, grass were peeking out, though it'd be a bit yet before the fields were again verdant in shades of green. The young leaves were timidly growing on their trees, still wary of sudden blast of cold that would rake them down without mercy.

The beginning of spring always was full of confusion.

_(My) Reflection on the pond's surface, _

_tentatively taking shape _

_under the hazy moon.

* * *

_

Author Note:

-Sou-chan faints a lot, ne? I'm sorry, it's probably out of character, but it's really too funny not to do it that way.

-Keiji-chan is really selfish, isn't he? The problem is that everyone is too human not to fall for his reasons and persuasion techniques. Keiji-chan is truly a manipulator of the first degree, wonder who he learned it from?

-Gyokuro… (cries) I'm jealous of my own characters. That is so weird.

* * *

1 Himeccha—Corruption of "Hime-chan" lit. "Little Princess" 

2 Musuko -- Son

3 Yokatta --Thank whatever force from the heaven looking over you

4 Aku. Soku. Zan --Saitou's motto, the more poetic translation is "Sin. Swift. Slay."

5 Gyokuro--- Lit "Jewel Dew", also known as "Jade Dew". Considered to be the best green tea in the world by numerous sources. Sweet, rich, and delicate, this tea is normally reserved for distinguished guests. Kaoru-chan respects Hisui very much, ne?


	6. Breaking Surface

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

05: Breaking Surface

_He grinned mischievously at her, earning a grumble as she picked herself out of the pond. "You've gotten slow, been slacking when I'm off on business?"_

"_Been busy." She retorted. "You need a new accountant, 'cause the one you have now is either seriously overworked or sloppy—it's an effort just to make out what they've written on the report and I end up re-doing the whole thing off the accounts myself."_

_He laughed, "What would I do without you?"_

"_Drown in paperwork. But you're right; I've been slacking in my training." She wrung her wet sleeves._

"_And since you admit it yourself, shall we think up your punishment?"_

"_No, we can't." She disagreed mildly. "You've got more paperwork to work through."_

"_Damn."_

_His tone made her smile.

* * *

_

It was barely dawn when Yahiko stumbled to open the dojo's gate, blinking awake when he found Kaoru and Keiji on the other side, the boy looking as if he had been running and his sensei in gi and hakama.

"Do you always go running this early, Kaoru?" he asked, yawning when he loped alongside them, lazily greeting Soujirou who had been awakened when Yahiko stumbled for the gate.

"I used to, just starting again. I can't believe how out of shape I am," she answered, mild disgust in her voice even as she smiled and nodded at her guest. "I'm sorry about having to wake the two of you up so early; I must have accidentally locked the gate. But since you're both awake, join us in the dojo, Yahiko, Soujirou."

Yahiko and Soujirou raised their eyebrows and shrugged at each other, following the mother and son and wondering what she was going to do next. It had surprised them both when Saitou didn't as much as allude about Soujirou's status as a wanted man yesterday. Not only that, he had said something and she had laughed—leaving the rest of them to wonder just what it was about.

Kaoru must have noticed, because she chuckled at them. "For the sake of satisfying your curiosity."

They blinked at her.

"Okaa-sama is going to test Keiji today," the child chirped brightly. "If Keiji is ready the training can begin!" Then he ran off to retrieve his shinai.

Kaoru shook her head and sighed, "I wonder if he knows that childish act isn't helping the case?"

Yahiko grinned, "He's trying, Kaoru, cut him some slack."

"He loves you very much." Soujirou added, "And it's probably us that makes him so guarded."

A sad smile was their answer; honest with them in turn of their honesty. "It wasn't that," she said gently, "Sometimes I wonder if I would feel better if he blames me for my decisions and weaknesses. I am not a good mother."

"Keiji-kun thinks otherwise. You're the world for him." Soujirou argued quietly and Yahiko nodded in firm support of his statement. "I am… envious. I don't remember much of my mother." He added with even less volume, more to himself rather than to anyone else, but Kaoru and Yahiko both had sharp ears.

"Didn't have much of a family, did you?" Yahiko began bluntly. If Kaoru was willing to make that gamble, Yahiko will do his best to assist her. Soujirou's kicked-puppy-ness was beginning to bother him greatly. It reminded him too much of himself, until he had given up on waiting and started barking instead.

"Well," _the only family I knew of beside Shishio-san and Yumi-nee tried to kill me._ "You can say that."

"Why are you always smiling?" the question took Soujirou off-balance, and he almost tripped over his own feet. "I can tell that you always smile when you want to do something else instead. Fox-smile isn't something I'm unfamiliar with."

Yahiko blinked at his sensei before turning his attention to Soujirou again. "It's like something you do to defend yourself," he added slowly, puzzlement in his tone. It surprised Soujirou that the young boy had seemed familiar with the concept.

Soujirou looked down firmly at the ground, forcing his feet to follow the shihandai. She and her son were both gifted with amazing insight, and for a moment he irrationally wondered if they were some sort of lie detectors.

For that matter, just how will he answer that question, anyway?

"Keiji is taking too long. I'll go see if he needs any help finding his way." Yahiko commented as he casually split way from them.

The question that had been thrown at him was actually a very open one, to which Soujirou could answer almost anything without sounding too weird. The woman gave him a lot of space, and the option whether he wanted to say anything at all.

The really weird thing was that he wanted to confide to her, something that he had never felt before.

"Keiji and Yahiko probably found the straw dummies and took their time taking it out."

Was this planned, even? He remembered that Himura-san had talked about the woman that had taken him in, and wondered at the woman with the same name, who obviously knew Himura-san, who was at once so different and so similar.

Nevertheless, he now knew just why Himura-san admires her so much.

He wanted to tell her, though, wanted her to know, just needing someone to listen.

"Smiling… is what I always did when I knew they were going to hurt me," he said in a very small voice, almost a whisper, but he knew she heard. "They didn't do so much to hurt me if I'm smiling."

To his surprise, she nodded instead of being puzzled. "To them, there's no fun in hurting something that refuses to fold to bad treatment." Her voice was gentle and soothing and held no judgement. There was something in this woman that did not allow her to treat harshly, as if to do so would be against her very nature.

That was enough and he folded.

* * *

"There was a child," he began. "A child outside marriage, between a rich rice merchant and a lone, poor woman. When the child was very young, the mother died, and the father took the child into his family. He declared that the child was there to stay and he was to be treated well.

"The child was thus treated civilly, but with grudging politeness and displeased distance. When the rice merchant died, the family felt it no longer necessary to maintain their promise. They beat the child for their amusement and made him work like a slave."

Soujirou took a shaky breath, looking at the ground. "Eventually, one day the child smiled after they had beaten him to the ground, and kept the smile as he aggravated them further. But there was something lacking in the rest of the beating. Since then, the child found they hurt him less if they could not make him lose that smile, and thus I keep on smiling."

Kaoru absently wondered if he noticed his slip on his reference of himself as the third party. But she kept her silence—this was his story.

"One day, when they left the child to move the rice into a warehouse, there was screaming from the street; curious, the child left his task and peered around to find the cause of the screaming."

Soujirou thought he might be hyperventilating; it was so hard to breath. But he plodded on. "He found… that a bandaged man burned all over was killing some policemen. He saw me. I thought he was going to kill me too—and out of habit the child began smiling. The smile seemed to have both confused and amused the bandaged man.

"In the end the bandaged man agreed to let the child live, if the child got him bandages and food and a place to hide. So the child did, and hid him in the warehouse—there was little risk, the family rarely checked the warehouse since they had the child doing all the chores.

"During that time when the bandaged man was hiding inside the warehouse, once again the child was beaten by the family, and he asked why the child wasn't complaining. The child explained to him that he wasn't always like that—that at first he gets angry and cries and screams, until he realized he starts smiling instead, because there was nothing else left to do. As long as he smiles he can take anything, and perhaps it was my own fault for being born in the wrong arrangement. The bandaged man told the boy that he was wrong—that it was because he was weak. He told him that 'The strong survive, and the weak die', and gave the child his wakizashi(1). He said it was as a payment for staying in the warehouse.

"Then the family discovered the missing bandages."

Soujirou took a tremulous breath, trying to force air into unwilling lungs. "That night, the child was planning to return the wakizashi because he didn't know what to do with it—and he didn't think that he would ever be able to be strong.

"Before he could, the younger sons of the family found him, and started beating him up. When I was so badly beaten I could barely move, I heard that they were planning to kill me—and all I could think was for someone to save me. Someone, anyone.

"The child ran to the wakizashi he had hidden underneath the house, and one of the younger sons crawled down to follow him. He found the child sitting underneath the house holding the wakizashi by the tsuka(2). He reached forward to take the wakizashi from me, but he made a mistake—he pulled at the wakizashi by the saya(3), and the blade slid free with me still hanging on to the tsuba—and I killed him."

He choked, belatedly realizing that he had been switching between 'the child' and 'I', but he forced himself to go on. After this she would want him to go, she wouldn't want him to stay anywhere near Keiji.

"Then I killed the rest of them. After that, I followed Shishio-san—there was nowhere else to go, after all. I became the first of JupponGatana, and I killed upon his command. Whoever it was that he told me to, I would kill."

* * *

Kaoru forced herself to keep her hands relaxed, and not reflexively clenching and loosening, cautious that she might frighten him.

"Soujirou," she began when he fell silent after his tale, resolutely staring at the ground. "I think from what I heard you were much less of a demon, much more a frightened child. In your circumstances, I might have done the same thing—what right have I to judge?"

The look in his eyes when he raised his head was enough to break her heart. He was waiting for her to push him away in revulsion.

"Would you listen to me?" He nodded slowly, and she continued. "Human's first instinct is the same as an animal, and that is to survive—cornered animals are vicious. I admit that you might have been a little carried away, but do you think I will fault you for defending yourself when they cornered you with as much regard they give to a barn rat?"

He averted his eyes, and bit his lips, almost unwilling to hear her defend him. "Shishio-san asked me if I cried, at the end."

"Did you?"

The question seemed to have taken him aback. "I…"

"Don't know? It doesn't matter whether you did or did not." She continued calmly. "Why would you think that I would think less of you for trying to survive? You said you murdered your family, I rather think that what you did was self-defence. It might be true that you didn't have to kill all of them, but I suppose you had had to have been keeping a bit of a grudge—not that I condone wanton killing, you understand, but when it comes down to it, there's always risks of the survivors trying to stab you from the back. Anyway, I wasn't there, so I couldn't judge."

His head whipped back to stare at her. "I continued killing after that, under his order, and sometimes..." He stated in a low whisper, desolate, as if a cold had settled into his bones with his admission. Kaoru understood what he meant; he had killed a few even without order, or necessity.

She couldn't help but smile.

"Do you still think that Shishio is right? If a man offends you, would you draw a sword and kill him without regard?"

A rather horrified look answered her.

"What Shishio said, that the strong survive and the weak die, is what we call the Law of Wild Anarchy—predator and prey. Humans think that they have been civilized enough to move away from it, but apparently that is not true." Kaoru commented absently. "In fact, by trying to make themselves civilized humans strive to be different from other animals so much that they set expectations upon themselves, which they are constantly falling short of. Therefore, while Shishio Makoto isn't wrong, in a way, humanity _should_ know better than that. Considering that they were the ones that imposed upon themselves that they shouldn't be the same as their wilder counterparts, that they should be governed by reason and compassion. They should know better, but there's no denying that most of the time they don't.

"Your childhood is in a way a very good proof of what Shishio taught you, I can see why you believed him. But you doubted, all the while—because a part of you still hoped otherwise. Now, I don't know the details of your fight with Kenshin, but I think this is precisely the crack he used to drive you to distraction during your fight."

Soujirou nodded with a rather wry twist to his lips.

"While I agree that life is precious, and no one should ever kill wantonly, I am always of the opinion that this world would be a better place if people were more willing to forgive. You found your choice and you took a path where you didn't have to kill anymore, and wouldn't. That is enough for me. As to those you had killed, it is up to you to seek your peace. I am not the one who you have to ask for forgiveness. The only thing I can tell you is that you can live, and you will be welcome here. And if I accepted Kenshin, I could always accept you."

Kenshin too hadn't know, hadn't know that there were other ways but to kill—if nothing else, they all owe Tomoe that she had shown him the path.

"Is it?"

She tilted her head, wanting to hear him say it out loud.

"To live?"

She smiled, "In the beginning, it is all that we may, in fact, do. We can live, of course. It is alright to be _happy_, because that indeed is within our right when we are born." She waved a slender hand to illustrate her point. "Dying is easy, Seta Soujirou, therefore death is never a proper atonement. One cannot change the past, or live in it. One can only look forward, and let the past be a lesson they don't forget. When you die, it's over—an easy way to get out of prolonged retribution."

He laughed, wavering, uncertain and almost under his breath—but it was a start.

She might have said more, but Keiji and Yahiko took that moment to enter the dojo, breathing hard from extricating the straw dummy that they had put in the yard right outside the dojo. But it didn't matter, as Soujirou's attention had turned inward, turning over her words.

Not a bad timing, he needed to think anyway, and they have time. Kenshin really wouldn't be back for a couple more days, as there had been a transport breakdown on the path he and Sano had to take to came back to Tokyo.

Before that, she would make Seta Soujirou either a permanent resident of the dojo, or a man ready to live again. Here, he will find himself, if she had anything to do about it.

* * *

One cannot change the past, or live in it. Therefore one can only look forward.

She did not say anything she did not mean. But how could she mean it? How could she look at him, know that not only until lately does he regret the lives he ended so brazenly, and yet, feel no hatred for it? Did it really not matter to her?

She could not forgive him; that he understood, because forgiveness wasn't hers to give. Unless she was of relation to anyone he had killed, it wasn't her right to say whether he was forgiven or not.

He had followed Shishio-san because he didn't have anyone else to follow. He had followed Shishio-san's orders to kill this and that person because he didn't know what else to do. It wasn't until Himura-san that he learned that there might be choices. It wasn't until just now, with Kamiya-san, that he understood the meaning of choices.

When Shishio-san threatened him he had chose to survive, and thus this lead to him hiding Shishio-san in the warehouse and obtaining the wakizashi. When his guardians decided to kill him, he had again chose to survive, and in consequence they died by his hands. He had chosen to follow Shishio-san; he had chosen to believe Himura-san. In the end he had desired not to kill again, and this was the only thing Kamiya-san believed was of any import.

He had to search for his own answer, but maybe Kamiya-san could help him along with that.

He wanted to stay here, and repay the trust Keiji-kun and Kamiya-san had given him with all that he has. He wondered about the likelihood of that thought.

In the meanwhile, Keiji-kun and Kamiya-san was sizing each other across the mat, all playfulness seemingly burned away from both. Now that he was free to pay attention, Soujirou leaned forward, wishing to gauge both combatants' skills.

* * *

Yahiko was quite taken aback by the tiger-bright intensity that Keiji emanated as he stood poised with his shinai, waiting for opportunity. His sensei's posture was relaxed, but he knew that she was paying utmost attention.

Caution was ingrained in Keiji's posture and the watchful way he regarded both his opponent and the surrounding. Hours of long practice set in the way he kept his grip on his shinai, not too tight, just enough to keep the blade steady.

Then Kaoru inclined her head, and like it was a signal he had been waiting for, Keiji began to move. Children were fast, that Yahiko knew—he exploited that fact many number of times himself—but they were also generally clumsy, more enthusiastic than actually skilful—like him—but Keiji's movements were fast and measured, smooth like a cat moving in for the kill.

Was it only long hours of voluntary practice, he wondered, or the difference between natural talent? Kaoru had been reluctant to discuss it, but she had conceded that natural talent did play a big part in differentiating how far a person could go in swordsmanship, as well as hard work. Yahiko knew he wasn't bad on the talent department, but he was too impatient and too often underestimating the importance of slow, careful steps. Keiji didn't have that flaw; the thousand swings voluntary practice Yahiko saw him doing yesterday attested to that—and Soujirou had affirmed that even on the road he kept up with the practice, forcing himself through the routine everyday.

Yahiko envied that patient dedication.

What does it feel like, to hone oneself into that edge of a blade until nothing else can be seen but that glinting surface?

Kaoru parried the blow almost lazily, barely stirring from her position. Keiji darted out of range and wove in again with tenacity, eyes bright and almost amber. In between two overhead strikes he found a window of opportunity and thrust low and up, forcing his mother to spin out of the way. But as she spun, she turned and slammed her shinai down in a heavy strike that her son barely managed to block.

"Good, good." She exclaimed in satisfaction as they separated and the boy skidded back a few steps. "You learned well enough to find that flaw in the defence, but you must remember that your opponent won't be a block of wood."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind." And off he went again with renewed vigour. Keiji's movements were very basic, but well thought and well executed. Kaoru, too, kept her reactions basic; defence, parry, counter, all defensive, nothing fancy, just effective.

Yahiko wondered where the skill she displayed had gone when they needed it in that turbulent year. Did she somehow manage to de-train herself as a reaction to whatever happened before she met Kenshin, and her coming to terms with the past the reason why it was all returning to her?

It was not something that could be asked out loud. Which is why Yahiko would never voice his thoughts. Nevertheless, he wondered.

Whenever Yahiko went to a duel, more often than not he went in with a flurry of strikes trying to undermine his opponent with sheer surprise—and maybe slot in one or two imitations of Kenshin's Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu, though lately he had given up on that. Kaoru told him that he needed to think more, that techniques were only effective if he knew when and where to utilize them, not just to use them blindly.

Keiji would be an excellent swordsman, and Yahiko resolved to work even harder so that he could at least keep up. It wouldn't be long, in the end, before the child equals him; Yahiko might be young, but he knew limitations, and the smoothness in Keiji's manoeuvres was something he had yet to attain, and might be too late to ever attain.

Kaoru had named him her successor, and Yahiko would be damned before he disappoints her.

* * *

Breakfast was late, but good. Despite Soujirou's statement of not being a good cook, he was better than the rest of the house—Keiji-kun showed promise to be a good chef, but he was too young to try cooking yet. Kamiya-san teased both Yahiko and Soujirou through it all, making them both blushed and flushed from laughter.

It was comfortable, and Soujirou felt like he had been there forever; teasing, being teased, laughing and smiling. It was a very warm, very good place to live in, and he wanted very much to stay there, with people who were rapidly becoming the family he never had.

"Then stay," Kamiya-san's warm, melodic voice washed over him—he didn't even question just how did she know what he was thinking anymore. "This is my house, and I have the final say. I cannot stop you if you want to go, but be assured that you will always be welcome here."

"Can I?" Soujirou asked, almost childlike. "I want to stay."

"Sure you can!" Yahiko bellowed after swallowing his breakfast. "I mean, look who else she adopts! One ex-hitokiri, one ex-pickpocket, one ex-gangster and one ex-opium maker; you'll fit right in with no problem, Soujirou!"

Keiji-kun giggled that glass-bell tinkle, "Stay; Keiji will be sad if Sou-nii goes."

Soujirou lowered his head and smiled sincerely, trying to hold back tears. "Then thank you very much for having me." Keiji-kun squealed and rushed over to hug him, toppling them both, laughing, to the floor. Yahiko grinned at them and patted Soujirou's shoulder, all animosity forgotten.

Kamiya-san smiled indulgently at them all.

* * *

"Um, so, Keiji-kun… this means your family name is Kamiya, isn't it?" Soujirou had been puzzled about the child's reluctance to give out his family name all the way through the journey, and in that lazy evening, with the slight breeze playfully ruffling about them and a field broom in his hands, he had to ask.

Keiji straightened from the pose he had tucked himself into to inspect a dandelion. Soujirou was about to take his lack of response as an affirmation when the boy answered. "Yoshino."

Soujirou blinked. "Huh?" Yoshino? But his mother was… Behind them, Yahiko stopped his progress of mopping the floor and perked his ears to listen.

"My mother's house is Kamiya, but my father's name is Yoshino Kazuomi." Keiji straightened, hands smoothing his hakama and cleaning invisible dirt and dust off it. "They're both the sole inheritors of their houses, and they both have responsibilities to it. So do I."

Soujirou blinked, his face cast in confusion. Yahiko, though, understood the importance of name, heritage, and the burden that goes with it.

In silence they both returned to their task, mulling over the little boy's words.

Kaoru, Yahiko thought with an admiration he would never admit to anyone else, was good. It didn't take longer than a couple of days before Soujirou and Keiji were running chores alongside him, chatting about everything and nothing, working on their swordsmanship, and teasing each other with an ease that surprised both him and Soujirou. In the midst of all the activities Yahiko had almost forgotten a very important thing.

Kenshin and Sano were late, a _week_ late, in fact, and it was beginning to worry him. Kaoru's eyes darted to the gate sometimes, but she always quite firmly turned her attention elsewhere. Her dedication to trust Kenshin was almost boggling, and he didn't know anyone who would have fought themselves like that, just to be able to say truthfully that they had trusted someone to be able to take care of their own selves.

Kenshin was an idiot; Yahiko knew, finally, just why does Hiko called his only student 'stupid' all the time. Oh, he was brilliant on the battlefield, he wasn't that thick either, but when it came to simpler life, he had as much clue as a brick.

"Is something wrong, Yahiko?" Yahiko started out of his musings at Soujirou's voice, finding out that he had stopped moving in the middle of sweeping the engawa. The young man was looking at him questioningly, comfortable as he split wood for the bathhouse.

Soujirou and he were, in a way, alike. The difference lay in their choice of defensive reaction—Soujirou draws himself in, pasting on a smiling mask until he forgot himself while Yahiko lashes outward, a prickly hedge dog. Well, sans the spells of arrogant ego-trips Yahiko frequently found himself falling into.

Yahiko shrugged, "Kenshin and Sano are late."

"Himura-san is?" Soujirou's eyes widened.

"There was a flood on their route." Yahiko went back to sweeping. "Kaoru said they might be late by a couple of days. But this is the fourth; I just hope nothing happened to them."

Soujirou didn't answer immediately, "I'm sure they're fine…"

Ah, but Soujirou didn't know about the deterioration of Kenshin's body, the result of too much abuse the man had put himself through pulling manoeuvres he shouldn't. Nevertheless, Yahiko didn't mention it out loud. If Kenshin wanted Soujirou to know, he didn't lack a mouth and a working voice box.

Someone knocked at the gate, and Yahiko strode over to open it while Soujirou retreated to the house. He blinked at the sight of a slightly smirking Saitou and his confused wife. "You don't usually come around at this hour."

"Brat." The wolf retorted with too much self-satisfaction for his own good. "Battousai and the Ahou had been spotted back in Tokyo; they will be here soon enough."

Yahiko blinked, then grinned as he led the pair into the Kamiya premises.

This promised to be good.

* * *

"—and the nerve! I should've—"

Kenshin sighed and tried to tune out Sanosuke's irritated grumbling. He was just as irritated, really, by the snob that had caused them more delay on top of the flood, and Sanosuke's incessant complaining merely compounded the slight headache behind his eyes, and the worry in his heart.

His lateness would have worried Kaoru-dono, and like anything, he hated having to worry her. He wasn't worth it in the first place, but he knew he would never convince her of that.

"—the insufferable, no good son of a—"

"Sano, shut up!" Sanosuke, Kenshin swore, was a very good friend, but sometimes it was just too tempting to throttle him. The young man hadn't grown very much from the cocky, brash teenager who had challenged him for revenge, and while at times he was thankful for it, other times it set his teeth on edge.

The brawler fell silent, stealing cautious looks at the slightly fuming ex-hitokiri walking alongside him. Sano was irritated beyond belief for being accosted by idiots, but Kenshin was cantankerous because he wanted very much to return home.

Home to Kaoru-dono.

His pace picked up at the idea, already picturing in his mind her beautiful smile, spreading slowly like a blooming flower, the lightening of her liquid eyes, and her warm voice, calling out to him.

Soon enough, the dojo came into view, and Kenshin wondered if he had shown some outward reaction to the sight when Sano chuckled, "Down, boy. There's still Yahiko in the dojo; wouldn't want to give a bad example."

The redhead fought down a blush. "This one doesn't know what you're talking about, Sano, that he doesn't."

Sano barked a laugh. "Keep telling yourself that, and maybe you'll believe it one day."

Kenshin didn't dignify that with an answer, and the gangster sniggered, folding his arms behind his head as they approached the quiet dojo.

Then he hesitated.

There were two unfamiliar ki inside the dojo, with addition to Kaoru-dono and Yahiko, and Kenshin frowned as he felt both the Wolf and his wife hanging around the yard. Something niggled at the back of his mind as he studied one of the unfamiliar ki. Someone he should know; different, but still someone familiar

Sanosuke had slowed, as well, and was slightly tensed as he took Kenshin's reaction as something being amiss. They approached the dojo's gate carefully, wary and ready to fight.

And when the door opened, the two unfamiliar ki stepping out, Kenshin gripped the sakabatou's hilt and Sano tightened his fist.

Kenshin's eyes widened as Seta Soujirou came into view.

"_You?_" Sano exclaimed, "Kisama! What the are _you_ doing _here_?"

The Tenken's smile dropped off his face, and Kenshin blinked at the utter surprise plain on the young man's face. "I—"

But Sano wasn't listening anymore, charging forward with fighting intent.

"Sano! Wait—"

But the tall gangster didn't stop, and Tenken froze, eyes wide as he watched.

"_No!_"

All of a sudden, Tenken fell back and was being pushed behind a tiny child who shielded the young man with his own body, arms outstretched. Biting off a mild curse, Kenshin surged forward to knock Sanosuke off-course, but he was too late.

Luckily, Sano managed to stop right before he barrelled over the small child. Tenken had gathered his wits and was trying to pull the child back with him, but the boy wouldn't budge. "Don't hurt Sou-nii!"

They stared in amazement at the little boy, trembling in fear but with eyes wide open staring defiantly at them. Kenshin pulled Sanosuke back, and the gangster let himself fall out of fighting stance. A little boy with wide, liquid eyes, determination colouring them solid greyish brown.

"What's all this ruckus?"

Kaoru-dono.

Almost dazedly, Kenshin turned and found himself staring at the small woman… who was frowning with extreme displeasure at him and Sanosuke. Taken aback by the flash of ominous storm within her eyes, Kenshin stepped back a pace. "Kaoru-dono—"

"Okaa-sama!"

What?

"_What?_"

Kenshin and Sanosuke stared dumbly at the little boy that flung himself into Kaoru-dono's arms, still trembling. They watched, shell-shocked—Sano with a slack jaw—as Kaoru-dono went on her knees and rubbed her hands over the boy's back, making soothing noises.

"Kaoru-dono…?" Kenshin ventured tentatively.

"I didn't give you leave to threaten my guests, Sagara Sanosuke." She snapped. "And I certainly didn't give you leave to traumatize my son."

Her… _son?_

Kenshin felt the ground shake under him, and for a moment he waited for it to shatter.

"Ano… Jou-chan… since when d'you have a son?"

"Since a long time, Sagara." Her voice was clipped. "You just never think to ask."

And they didn't, did they? Kenshin felt like he was being punched in the guts. He knew for a long time that he didn't know much about her at all, but to know that someone else had known what _he_ wanted so much to know abruptly made him feel like breaking ten years of non-killing vow.

He really didn't have a right to feel that way, but he couldn't really stop it either. He had wanted this woman for a _damn_ long time, trying to convince himself that she was out of reach to find out that he was horrifically right.

But where was the man now? If he didn't do the right thing—

"Soujirou," Kaoru-dono stated slowly, looking at Sano in the way one tries to make imbeciles understand "was kind enough to escort my son safely to me when he became… separated from his guardian. For that, I'm in his debt. That means, Sano, if you try to harm him, you're going to deal… with _me._"

Sanosuke held up his hands in surrender and supplication. "Alright, alright! I was worried, you know, 'cause he was JupponGatana and all that—and hey! He's wanted by the government!"

"He _was_." Kaoru stated firmly. "There isn't a JupponGatana anymore, and Saitou is waiting to take _you_ to the jail."

"He _was_." Kaoru stated firmly. "There isn't a JupponGatana anymore, and Saitou is waiting to take _you_ to the jail."

The tall gangster yelped. "He _what_? But I thought—"

"Ahou."

Kenshin's narrowed eyes found that Saitou had come out to watch the ruckus. The man looked far too pleased for his own good.

"Well then, Kamiya-san." Saitou and his wife inclined their heads respectfully at her. "Thank you for such an entertainment. Regretfully, we must be going." And while his wife was polite enough to softly greet Kenshin and Sanosuke, the Wolf pivoted neatly on his heels and marched away, smoke trailing behind him.

Kenshin had a feeling that he was the butt of a joke.

"Kenshin?"

Her voice pulled him out of that disorienting feeling, and he turned back to her to find out that Soujirou, Sanosuke and her son had all filtered back into the dojo.

She smiled, still the smile that he had envisioned on the way back to the dojo, slowly unfurling like the petals of a flower.

It made his heart ache. He wanted so very badly to take her into his arms and kiss that smiling mouth.

"Okaerinasai, Kenshin."

Her voice and tone was the same too, warm, welcoming. Relieved that he was back, happy to have him around again. Utter bliss. Total, complete, and utter bliss.

Kenshin opened his mouth, but it was a while before his voice finally worked. "Tadaima."

All the while, she waited with understanding, her patience infinite.

Even if that was all he could have of her, at that moment in time Himura Kenshin knew that he was a very lucky man.

_In the blossom haze _

_everything wavers; _

_(but) you are you (still).

* * *

_

"It wasn't a very nice thing to do."

Hajime turned his head to look at the woman walking beside him and smirked. "Oh, come off it. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy the way he looked like his life just ended? Or the way that Ahou gapes like a beached fish?"

Tokio smacked his upper arm. "That's horrible!"

The Wolf turned back toward the road, still smirking. "The boy's father would have appreciated the irony."

"That in a gathering of so many dark pasts, the most normal person is the one they know the least of?"

He smiled appreciatively at her. "I wouldn't call her normal… When I call her a Tanuki(4), I wasn't being insulting."

"Oh?" His wife gave him a curious look. "You knew of her, before she became connected to Himura-san?"

"Indeed. Though I must say it was acquaintance by extension." He breathed deeply, inhaling the cigarette. "It was the boy's father. The senior Yoshino worked with the police for some cases, meaning occasionally we were partners. It was such a shame; he had quite the potential."

"He died?"

"When I was transferred to Yokohama for three years before Himura came to Tokyo. Apparently he was lost; there wasn't a body to bury." He paused, then added reflectively, "To think of it, I didn't know until now that he had any children, much less with his almost-sister."

* * *

_"Why?" _

_He smiled, gentle and true. "Because you're worth everything, Himeccha(5). Simple as that." _

_A wave of anguish was building like a coiling dragon ready to spring. "I am not, I am not…" _

_"Smile for me." _

_The first butterfly of spring, _

_iridescent and fleeting _

_(but) eternal in memory.

* * *

_

Author Note:

-Whee, special treat—two attempts of Haiku

-The first Haiku, I think, is an indirect tribute of my convoluted mind to a song titled "Travelling to Taipei in Winter to see Rain", It's one of my all-time favs. Another one is "Project: Horned Owl" ending song, which I neither found the title nor the lyric for. Anyone has them?

-The end of this chapter always makes me feel a little melancholic. To think I'm the one who wrote this, I wonder if I'm a bit of a masochist.

-Kaoru might sounds like she's justifying murders, but that shouldn't have been the case. It seems that I put the idea across rather badly. What she was trying to say was that: if she demanded suffering of those who had inflicted them, does that make her any better compared to them? She would have been sinking to their level.

* * *

1 Wakizashi--short sword, blade between 12 and 24 inches (between 30 and 60 cm, with an average of 50 cm), similar to but shorter than a katana. The wakizashi is usually worn together with the katana by the samurai or swordsmen back in feudal Japan in which case the pair is then called Daisho. 

2 Tsuka—handle of the sword.

3Saya—sheath of the sword.

4 Tanuki—Dictionary says this is a raccoon, but that's incorrect; another translation calls it a "Raccoon Dog", and I'm not sure how much more accurate that is, if any. Tanuki is a common fixture in Japanese Folklore; they reportedly have a single leaf on top of their head and delights in playing tricks on travellers along dark, lonely roads.

5 Himeccha—Corruption of "Hime-chan", meaning "Little Princess". Not proper Japanese, but hey, it's cute.


	7. Finding Their Feet

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta: **Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

06: Finding Their Feet on Dry Land

"_You came."_

_He watched her with half amusement, half trepidation. Their history wasn't the best, after all. But her bluntness was surprising as it was terrifying; and she really was too calm for comfort. "Have you been waiting?" He answered in kind._

_Her father watched them in utter confusion, not understanding their exchange. He could only imagine what they look like to their surroundings, two children, four and nine in age, conversing in all seriousness with a familiarity that didn't make sense—no one knew that they have met before, after all._

_Confusing a sight as they were, if their surroundings knew what they really talked about, there would have been much more alarm._

_What she had really said was: Have you come to kill me?_

_What he had replied in turn was: Are you waiting to kill me?_

_He studied the girl, peering deep into her dark blue eyes. She wasn't even angry, how uncanny. He once thought he had seen everything—or almost, but it seemed that the world was set on proving him wrong. She didn't even seem to be anything other than accepting—not resigned, but understanding—and seemed as uncaring that he might end her life._

_He was surprised to find that it dismayed him._

_She was right, he came to kill her, but at that moment he would have given everything up to make sure she lives on._

"_I come." He said gently, "to tell you a story, I think you will find it useful." They were, if nothing else, one of a kind. He could guide her, and help make her life bearable. Until they have to make their decision, he would protect her. That loneliness, they could be there for each other—it was never as bad when there's someone else to be lonely with._

_She had watched him carefully as he had studied her, but stepped forward and gave him her hand. He took it in his, and awkwardly gave it a light squeeze, unsure if he meant to reassure, or whatnot._

_Hand in hand, they went to her confused father.

* * *

_

It took Yahiko and a week's worth of lunch bribery to find out just what had been going on; and when the descendant of Tokyo Samurai finally finished telling his tale, both Sanosuke and Kenshin sat dazed on the engawa.

It all made a terrible, but believable sense. The change of clothing, the pervasive sadness in her eyes, the way she sometimes stops and stares into the distance. She had a man to mourn and a son not at her side. She must have married young—but that wasn't really an anomaly in their time.

Kaoru-dono had spoken to them both about Soujirou's continuing presence in the dojo somewhat firmly, and they had promised her they would both be on their best behaviour. Kenshin, however, resolved to help Soujirou in any way he could after hearing Kaoru-dono's explanation on just why she wanted him to stay with them—even considering that he was another mouth to feed on her already tight budget.

Kaoru-dono had given him a second chance, now Kenshin was determined to see someone else had a fair chance at the redemption she had promised this ex-hitokiri.

In the meanwhile Keiji was a sweet, sweet boy, and seeing the way Soujirou watched him in utter adoration made Kenshin wonder about the reportedly dead father. Was he anything like his son? Sweet, understanding, always eager to lend a hand? He wasn't sure for a few moments if he would like this boy—the reminder that his landlady had belonged to another man, maybe still belonged to the man even beyond the grave—but a few words and some conversation had told him that it was quite impossible to hate the little boy.

Yahiko sings the boy praises. It was so very out of character that Keiji's swordsmanship must have been something special indeed, despite his age—Yahiko very rarely praises anyone; he shows his admiration in other ways. As did Soujirou, who put the boy on a pedestal—though Kenshin suspected that Soujirou was somewhat biased when it came to Keiji. But he supposed it was simply another reason why he should befriend the boy instead of antagonizing him.

Besides, it was kind of entertaining watching Yahiko and Sano belatedly watching their usually dirty language around the wide-eyed child. He wondered what Megumi-dono would think when she stopped by.

Chores would take a bit of reassignment. Soujirou was like Kenshin; they pay their tenancy by doing chores around the dojo. And in addition it seems the young man had planned to help Kaoru-dono on giving lessons both in the Kamiya dojo and wherever she taught outside. Keiji insisted on doing the simpler chores, and Kaoru-dono approved of the plan, so he would probably be assigned some of the smaller tasks.

When Sano asked Kaoru-dono why she didn't simply make Soujirou pay rent, she airily pointed out that Sano himself was a freeloader who didn't do anything worth paying a meal for—at least Soujirou did chores, and he could cook when Kenshin was away.

Kenshin tried very hard not to laugh at the offended look on Sano's face. He was only partially successful.

Soujirou, for his part, worked around Kenshin and Sano with a wary disposition which contrasted heavily with the ease by which he interacted with Yahiko, Keiji, and Kaoru-dono; he still called her Kamiya-san, but there was so much warmth that it almost didn't matter.

It wasn't only politeness; and it puzzled Kenshin that Soujirou would treat Kaoru-dono with respect one treats an elder—when he should only be about her age. It almost didn't make sense, until he sat back and thought about her behaviours.

Always before, his view of her was coloured by the girl he had first met in the dark streets of Tokyo, chasing after the fake Battousai, and the girl he had first come to live with. He had been upset when her liveliness subdued, and perhaps it had coloured the way he looked at her, until he realized, just lately, that there wasn't really anything to be upset about.

Kaoru-dono didn't act her age—she acted at least twice of it. Forcing himself to look at her without the memory colouring his eyes, he had to admit that he saw not a nineteen-year-old girl, but a middle-aged woman—a bit past her prime, but so very beautiful it didn't matter. This was she, the strong, unique woman with more spine than anyone he had ever met.

Soujirou never knew that more immature version of the woman Kenshin fell in love with, and suspected that he never really asked either. Keeping that in mind, it was possible that the young man had thought that she was either Kenshin's age or older. Kaoru-dono treated him like he was younger, as well.

Kenshin suspected, privately, that Soujirou worshipped Kaoru-dono and the ground she walks on. Well, so does he, though maybe in a different way.

And in the private recesses of the ex-hitokiri's mind, he can at least admit to himself that he still wanted her very much.

Perhaps—twice thinking her completely out of his grasp—even more.

* * *

In the morning, the kitchen usually belongs solely to Kenshin. Kaoru knew she could have warned Soujirou of it—their new addition had taken it on himself to make sure that she and Keiji would always be greeted with steaming tea and warm breakfast whenever they come back from their morning run—but she knew that if she did, Soujirou would have retreated somewhere and be miserable, and while Kenshin wanted to help the young man, he was very awful in reaching out first, and if he knew _he_ would retreat somewhere and be miserable.

So she simply made sure that Soujirou would come into the kitchen not knowing Kenshin would be there, and made sure that Kenshin had no knowledge that Soujirou would be there too. Once inside, neither would be able to leave without seeming rude or cowardly.

And both men had their pride, if nothing else. So she was reasonably sure that they wouldn't run away from each other.

It might have been too soon, but she knew either this issue gets itself resolved between the two, or Soujirou would promptly run away from the dojo.

At least, no matter how this kitchen thing turned out to be, no one will be able to accuse her of not even trying.

* * *

All the ice of winter had melted this far in the spring, but the morning was chilly, cold nipping at exposed skin. Despite the chill, Kenshin was up and about in the kitchen, cheerfully preparing breakfast. Once upon a time he would go into the task with surly disaffection—until he realized just how helpful menial tasks really were to a mind prone to torture its' self.

Kenshin and his mind, memory, and imagination were rarely in the best of relationships. Household chores gave him something to do, and as much as anyone calls him 'girly' because of it, he was thankful for them.

He had a feeling that Kaoru-dono was the only one who really understood, and for that understanding, he was thankful—because she really was the only one whose opinion really mattered. He was also thankful to that fuzzy face in his fever-hazed memory that taught him about it all in the first place—if only he could find out just who it was.

Rice was first, miso was second, and no one was usually awake to bother him at that stage, and so it was to Kenshin's surprise when the kitchen door slid open and a half-asleep, bleary-eyed Soujirou padded in with a yawn.

Registering his presence, Soujirou's guard was immediately up, and the ever-present—fake, Kaoru-dono told him—smile slammed down so abruptly on his face Kenshin just had to blink. They stood, eyeing each other awkwardly.

"Good morning, Himura-san. Is there… anything I can do to help?" Soujirou ventured quietly.

Gathering himself, Kenshin cast his eyes about, and they landed on the vegetables. _Perfect_. "Good morning, Soujirou. This one needs the vegetables sliced, that he does, if you please."

He watched, almost with amusement, as the young man's expression turned from wary to flabbergasted, the smile dropping. If he was mean, Kenshin probably would have laughed, but he firmly told himself he wasn't mean, and not to be, so he calmly and resolutely pasted his rurouni smile and returned to his miso.

Hesitantly, Soujirou moved into the kitchen and the cutting board, the bewilderment in his ki so clear it was still tempting Kenshin to laugh.

But he had once shown the same bewilderment when Kaoru-dono had found out who he was and didn't as much as bat an eye, asking for dinner. So who was he to make fun of the younger man, really?

He never liked the phrase 'pot calling the kettle black' anyway.

The morning and the kitchen was Kenshin's personal space. But now that Soujirou was here, he was willing to share. Kenshin had had help when Soujirou hadn't, even if that help consisted of an overbearing teacher, a woman who was originally intent on killing him, and a fuzzy face in his memory—until he found Kaoru-dono, that goddess of a woman, who reminded him that maybe what he had fought for wasn't a complete loss.

From the corner of his eyes he observed Soujirou cutting the vegetable into perfect slices, gaze intent. Kenshin had said to Kaoru-dono once that if circumstances had been different, he and Soujirou might have been friends.

The circumstances were different now. And maybe, what he had dimly wondered about could come into being. Noting that the miso was ready, he removed the pot from the fire and put it aside, then took some bowls for Soujirou to put the sliced vegetables into.

Soujirou's eyes darted to his face when he approached with the bowls, and nodded silently as Kenshin put them beside the cutting board. Kenshin, for his part, retreated two steps back and regarded the young man, clearly uncomfortable under his scrutiny, and he smiled gently. "Please relax, Soujirou, this one was just wondering if Kaoru-dono had you taking up kitchen duty in the first or the second day—she had this one doing it the first day he started boarding here."

The young man's eyes widened, then he ventured tentatively, putting aside the vegetables he had cut into the bowls, "She did? I… we figured out the second day I stayed here that considering I am a marginally better cook among the three of us…"

"That you might as well take charge of the kitchen," Kenshin finished, smiling widely. "That was what happened to this one, as well, that it did."

Kenshin's admission prompted a startled chuckle from the young man. "Did she know…" he didn't seem to be able to finish the question. Kenshin might have kept quiet and waited, but he decided to take pity.

"Who this one was?" he finished. "This one was never quite sure. But this one knows that it didn't bother Kaoru-dono very much—if at all—when she realized who this one was, that it didn't."

Soujirou was quiet for a while, "Doesn't she know that habit isn't… exactly safe?"

"Perhaps if it was anyone else, it would not be a safe habit." Kenshin chuckled, "But Kaoru-dono has excellent taste in people, that she does, and she has a way to make things work, very frequently, for her. This one is sure that you had noticed that yourself."

"Aa," Soujirou mused, "she does, at that. Do you know, Saitou-san barely mentioned me in the times he had been here with his wife?"

Kenshin couldn't help it anymore; he laughed, long and hard, bewildering the young man further.

* * *

Soujirou blinked at the laughing ex-hitokiri. Did he just say something funny?

Himura-san's wariness of his presence lasted barely into the evening. After that, the redhead was frank and open with him, quite honestly welcoming his presence there. And different with Kamiya-san or Yahiko and Keiji, this was the man that Soujirou had tried to kill, more than once. Who had known the frailty of his emotional armour, and had shattered it when they fought the last time.

This man was as willing as the rest to trust him, and Soujirou had never been more puzzled in his life.

People always say that once bitten, one would be twice shy. That didn't seem to apply to the inhabitants of this small dojo. Was it the unorthodox background, he wondered, or simply the base of their character?

Nevertheless, like the American says, one should not look at a gift horse in the mouth. Soujirou was thankful for the chance they had given him, and confusing as it was, he would try not to question it as much as trying to make it work.

"This one—" Himura-san had finally gathered his bearing. "This one wasn't laughing at you, he promises. This one had always found it uncanny how that Saitou and Kaoru-dono could ever become friends, that they were, at some obscure level."

Soujirou thought that it wasn't so much strange as it was uncommon. Kamiya-san and Saitou-san were both powerful personalities in their own right, and somehow there was a similarity to them, a central characteristic that they wouldn't be 'them' without.

That characteristic allowed them to be friends despite their differences. And to both of them, that was all that really mattered. It was a friendship that would never interfere in their line of duties, but at the same time, it was a friendship that line of duty would never interrupt.

They could be enemies and they would still be friends.

As Himura-san returned to his miso, Soujirou contemplated the hand of friendship the older man had extended to him, and considered what friendship it could be. The morning had warmed slightly from when he woke up and stumbled blearily into the kitchen. Himura-san hadn't kicked him out of the kitchen, and, it seemed, didn't mind his presence there.

The two of them, he thought, will prepare many breakfasts there, and he was just fine with the notion.

He also had a sneaking suspicion that Kamiya-san had deliberately put the two of them there. He must thank her later.

* * *

The morning was showing sign of turning into a beautiful day, mild weather, chirping bird. But black clouds descended over mother and son as the mother brooded on what she had discovered her son doing behind his caretakers' back.

Kaoru turned disapproving eyes toward the boy running beside her. Orgulla hadn't said anything, and Kaoru suspected that she didn't know about it. "How long have you been using the time-stretch dimension?"

Keiji didn't answer her and kept his gaze away. Kaoru pushed down her temper, reining in the impulse to implode, because to do so would make her a hypocrite. She, too, had not managed to resist using the anomaly—yes, she had been as stupid once, and so she knew he had done it.

Biting back a sigh, she turned her attention back to the path they were running on, studying the dirt track and uneven hillocks.

The time-stretch dimension allowed a person to tread a space between the blink of an instance to the next, and stretch a minute to equal an hour without the person within it aging any faster than the real-time speed. The use of it had allowed more hours of practice than what should ever be possible; there were only so many hours in a day, after all. While in real time Keiji had only been learning swordsmanship for half a year, with the time-stretch dimension it was entirely possible that his actual learning experience was really somewhere between two to three years instead. Knowing that, Keiji's rapid improvement made sense.

She would have told Yahiko about it to stop the other child from worrying how long he could keep ahead of Keiji, because when it comes down to it Keiji really _was_ cheating a bit. But Yahiko had no spirit-talent, and so Kaoru was obliged to keep her mouth shut.

The problem with time-stretch dimensions were that they can be extremely unstable, and if a person were any less trained in the flow and knowledge of magic, the result can be fatal. That was why it was generally prohibited for juniors to use the time-stretch without senior supervision.

She had in her early days been enough of a fool to try it unsupervised—luckily for her, Kazuomi had found out early and kept a tab on her. And unlike her, Kazu had the right to lecture—he hadn't, as Hisui-sama had testified, been so stupid as to risk his life like that. On the other hand, she knew it probably didn't matter very much if he had. Kazu and his magic was at a level of synchronization that the rest of them could only dream of—he could probably ride the wave of time half-asleep.

"Don't," she ordered mildly, her eyes trained on the lightening dawn, "do it when nobody's watching you. Life is perilous as it is; to lose you to a training accident will be just stupid."

"Hai," mildly sheepish assent; he would obey, but Kaoru thought with much exasperation that it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Irrationally, a part of her felt a bit of pride—for someone Keiji's age to be able to even mildly manipulate the space-time continuum… And she was quite certain nobody had thought to teach him. And to think that the boy had managed to get away with it so long without getting caught…

A promise of talent, and despite herself, and knowing that she hadn't been joking when she told Yahiko that whoever performed the duty of rinsing away Keiji's previous life had done a botched job, Kaoru felt a spark of anticipation—what could she teach him, and how would he learn it?

Orgulla would be horrified when she finds out just what Keiji had been sneaking into under her very nose—Kaoru really couldn't blame her, Orgulla was always busy, after all.

Keiji always was very alike to Kazu, despite the attitude, and for a long time she had been slightly curious if the boy had actually inherited anything from her side. Nevertheless, she despairingly wondered why, of all things he could have inherited from her did he end up with her hotheadedness?

At the very least, Keiji had so far displayed a level-headedness that would probably be enough to counter that temper. And of course, she was counting on the boy to be enough like his father that temper wouldn't matter very much…

Kazu and her both had a temper, but they also each have attributes that reins it in; Kazu had his tendency to exploit every little thing, and his willingness to pull all kinds of tricks that necessitates him never charging blindly, or hastily, into anything; Kaoru had her coldly analytical mind and her ability to disassociate herself from her emotions, her anger almost always subsiding before they flare.

Strong, uncontrolled emotions were dangerous for them, so they wound themselves in and in and in, burying themselves under discipline of ice, stone and metal. Burying their emotions under cold reasoning and facts. Reining in their heart and impulses under adamantine chains of frigid control.

It was a way to keep themselves sane, in the end, as much as an effort to maintain proper decorum.

In fact, it's more to keep themselves sane, because neither of them really cared about the world's notion of proper decorum.

She restrained a snort and let the corner of her lips curl into a smile. Five minutes with Kazu will illustrate the point quite clearly, no doubt.

* * *

Soujirou barely managed to put down the bowls before a cheerful Keiji bounced into the room and proceed to pounce on him, laughing breathlessly and singing good morning, prompting him into laughter as well.

He wrestled good-naturedly with the boy as Himura-san padded into the room, smiling at the sight of them while carefully making his way across with the pot of miso soup. Keiji yelped a good morning in the middle of the playful wrestling, for which Himura-san responded with a quiet chuckle.

Then Kamiya-san entered at a more sedate pace, her warm voice washing over the room like honey. Himura-san seemed to have promptly forgotten everything as he turned to greet her back, as if in a slight daze, before he managed to catch a hold of himself.

Soujirou felt Keiji's attention perk and noticed the frown that made its way briefly across that young face before it fell back into playfulness and proceeded to tickle him. In the midst of his laughter, Soujirou pondered.

Keiji and Kamiya-san were, in the end, more different than similar, and knowing what he found out about them sometimes made him wonder if it was wise to let them in so close to him so quickly.

But in all truth, Soujirou had as much choice in letting them in as he had a choice on which side of the world the sun was going to rise from—despite reasons, he trusted them, probably more than he should, and he could only hope he wouldn't come to regret it.

When Keiji had finally let up and they both got to their feet, Soujirou turned and greeted Kamiya-san, discreetly thanking her for making him and Himura-san talk. She promptly raised an eyebrow and pretended not to know anything, but smiled a small smile that he could not read.

Kamiya-san confuses him as much as she helps, and he wondered if he would continue to be baffled by her until he was old and grey. But she was patient with him, like helping a baby learning to walk, gently guiding, and subtly letting him know of the wonders of the world he was previously unaware of.

In high contrast to her subtleties and quiet, unreadable façade, she was as honest as they come—seeming to resent every deception while understanding the reason for them. Always careful as to what she says and implies, her silences full of implication; she does her best to never mislead, while still taking care to betray nothing.

Keiji, he had learned, had less compunction to deceive.

Nevertheless, to be fair, Soujirou knew as well that there was a reason, or reasons, for the deliberate misconception, reasons he was not privy to. Despite that, Soujirou trusted Keiji to be as honest as he dared to, and it seemed, at times, that the boy detests the necessity as much as his mother does. Those times were fleeting, but they were definitely there.

It should have alarmed him, the ease by which they snuck into his affection and under his guard, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. He had come to depend on their presence so much he knew he risked crippling himself emotionally if ever…

He had his share of nightmares and sleepless nights, and when he was slowly sinking under the weight of the dead staring at him, either or both mother and son would inevitably find him or he would seek them, and he would sit quietly in their presence and let it banish the darkness from his mind.

All this in less than a week, if it was a psychological warfare, Soujirou was very, very screwed.

He still couldn't bring himself to care; it was the first time he knew he had something close to a mother and a little brother, and come what may, he wouldn't give away this happy period for anything.

Himura-san's reaction concerning Kamiya-san, however, puzzled Soujirou at the same level, if not slightly more. The mood of the older man's ki swirled in contradiction, creating a confusing myriad shifting landscape Soujirou could not hope to follow. What he could identify told him that the older man was either divided in how he sees Kamiya-san, or hadn't quite decided yet—respect, possessiveness, protectiveness, hunger, worship; everything underscored by love, desire, and a chokingly pervasive sense of unworthiness.

Dividing rice into equal portion to each bowl, Soujirou absently wondered what Kamiya-san thought of Himura-san—she couldn't have not known, because if she could see Soujirou's ki, she could certainly see Himura-san's.

As he counted the chopsticks, he banished away the thoughts.

Curiosity aside, it was between Himura-san and Kamiya-san, and no one else—certainly not him.

* * *

When Sanosuke arrived to mooch breakfast, he cautiously greeted the Tenken, who just as cautiously greeted him back.

He had debated not coming for breakfast that day, wanting to take some time to think things over and decide where everything stands. Nevertheless, he didn't want them to think he was afraid or something like that, so he came anyway.

Yahiko wouldn't have let him live it down if the brat ever thought that Sano was afraid of anything.

Well, anything except an angry Jou-chan, that was.

Sanosuke paused in the act of cutting a bit of fish. Well, he really couldn't call Kaoru Jou-chan anymore, could he?

"Oku-san(1)."

The rest of the table froze in a variety of poses that would have gotten him laughing. Kaoru recovered quickly, though, put down the soup bowl and folded her hands on her lap. "What, Sano?" She must've realized that he was talking about her—pretty obvious anyway, considering that she was the only woman present.

"Oku-san." Sano declared. "I can't very well call you Jou-chan anymore, ne? 'Cause it'd be pretty inaccurate to do so," he paused, "Oku-san," testing the sound, he tentatively rolled it in his mouth, then nodded. "Yeah, like that, I think."

"Sano," she replied with something like exasperation. "I have a name; you can use that instead."

He grinned impudently, "Eh, what's the fun in that?" That problem settled, he returned to the fish. From the corner of his eyes he spotted the Tenken trying to hold back a laugh.

Sanosuke swallowed a smirk. Maybe he didn't need to think too much about it—he wasn't dumb, but he knew that thinking wasn't his thing, most of the time. Now that he thought of it, the Tenken shouldn't be too far away from his teenage years, either.

He'd drag the guy to the gambling den or the bar later—the best way to know someone is over sake and the thrill of the dice.

And if Soujirou had Kenshin's aptitude with the dice, it wouldn't hurt his pocket.

Much.

* * *

"_Himeccha, don't worry about it."_

_She blinked at him, "Himeccha, me?"_

"_Who else?" He had laughed, and she tapped him on the side with her fist._

_She crossed her arms, "If I'm a princess then what are you?"_

"_Your most loyal retainer of course." He had laughed again as she playfully chased him across the yard, before settling down next to the basket of laundry. "Now let me do my chores."_

"_Only if you let me help," she commanded imperiously, drawing herself up and lifting her chin in an arrogant tilt._

_His laughter returned, "Your wish is my command, Himeccha."_

_She smiled._

_The parting frosts,_

_cries of baby sparrow (are)_

_lamenting the end of spring.

* * *

_

Author Note:

-And here's one of the reason for Keiji's… um… unrealistic strength; he certainly ain't going to do it unsupervised any longer, and his mother would certainly take his advance over her other student(s) with a bit of chagrin. Keiji is _not_ a good boy (snerks) But then, neither was Kaoru a good girl. Still, considering that she uses it far longer than Keiji had, how many years had she accumulated? Combined with the time she spent in the time-stretch, who will be older, her or Kenshin?

-So, who could it be, the faint outline of the person in Kenshin's memory? I sense my muses working in that direction... I really AM suicidal

-The flashbacks, if anyone's wondering, were really done in random orders without any real reference to the rest of the chapters. They could have been meaningful; alas I'm not skilled enough a writer, so they were merely glimpses of the past.

* * *

1 Oku-san---Madame/Mrs 


	8. Recounting Value

**Blurbs:** In the bloom of Cherry Blossom under the sun of spring, Seta Soujirou escorts a child to the Kamiya Dojo, life is about to get very interesting, and not necessarily in a bad way.

**Disclaimer:** Rurouni Kenshin and subsequent characters belongs to Nobuhiro Watsuki. Steal my characters without my permission and die

**Timeline: **Spring, 1882—Meiji year 13; PostJinchuu (No, I don't know when the Meiji year starts or whatnot, this is just estimated through the birth dates)

**Beta:** Khori Bannefin and Bloodedwyngs

* * *

07: Recounting Value

"_It's almost bewildering how you could like Sakura so much, considering your history." He had laughed at her, but it was not at all mocking._

_Leaning back against the grey trunk, he caught a falling petal in his fine-boned hand. "If nowhere else, the spirits are quiet around my trees. A measure of peace I won't get anywhere else. Isn't it the same with you? Admit it; you like my trees as much as I do. We're the same, after all, despite sharing no blood."_

_She crossed her arms and pretended to be offended. "I don't have to admit anything."_

"_I suppose not, considering it's something we all know even if we never openly acknowledge it."_

"_Mou!"_

_He laughed again, and this time she tried to swat his head. He caught her hand and pulled her into a warm hug. "Himeccha, I know you."_

"_I know you too," despite her sombre tone; she tried to tickle him, to no avail. But he laughed even harder._

_She smiled.

* * *

_

"Keiji thinks that Sou-nii feels a lot better now."

Yahiko stole a look at the young boy intent on his one-thousand-swing routine, before returning his concentration to his own exercise. "Well… he's gotten comfortable with us, I think. Quite lost that kicked-puppy-ness of his. It's been a good month."

And indeed it was. Soujirou's presence restored the balance that Kaoru used to hold, until she changed radically—once he was comfortable to do so, the young man had fallen into the habit of teasing Sano and Yahiko until they chase him around, and in turn they tease him the way they used to tease Kaoru, though he doesn't chase them as often as they chased him.

Kenshin had always been warm toward their new addition, but he had always been friendly—or at least acts so—with everyone with the possible exception of Saitou. After that first tense afternoon they had started to settle into an easy friendship. Yahiko suspected that the fact they both had a past they regret was part of the reason why they were so comfortable with each other—other people could only sympathize so much without going through the same thing. Not, he supposed, that they talked about it—because he certainly couldn't imagine the topic ever coming up in a normal conversation.

Sanosuke didn't help matters at first with his rather violent greeting, but he had accepted Soujirou's presence readily enough afterward. He certainly shows up to drag Soujirou off to wherever he hangs around often enough. Yahiko hoped it wasn't gambling dens, because he knew if Kaoru found out there'd be hell to pay. But other than that, they were friendly enough with each other.

Yahiko supposed they were nearly the same age—maybe there were things for them to talk about.

Soujirou seemed to think of Kaoru as a mother figure, and weird as that was, Yahiko thought that it was, in a way, strangely fitting. Kaoru seemed to have ceased thinking of their newest family member as a stray and more like a son, treating him like Keiji's brother sometimes.

Yahiko had a feeling that one of these days; Soujirou would start calling her 'mother' instead of 'Kamiya-san'.

Megumi came down from Aizu to visit in the middle of that month, and to say she was surprised was a gross understatement. She had quizzed Kaoru and Tae on details, but the both of them were uncommonly close-mouthed regarding the whole matter.

The lady doctor had been slightly wary about Soujirou at first, but the moment she found out that he was easy to fluster her fox ears had popped out. Now she took every opportunity to tease the hell out of him—Soujirou was a perpetual shade of red whenever she was around. Yahiko suspected that Soujirou would have run for the hills at any sign of Megumi's appearance if only he wasn't afraid of being impolite.

Keiji took his cue from Kaoru, and unlike the women, he was far more skilled in deflecting conversations from topics he doesn't want to touch. A little too skilled, Yahiko thought sometimes, for a four-and-a-half year old.

Kaoru had mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like 'a little too much like his father' when she had stumbled on Sanosuke trying to dig up things from the boy. She had, of course, refused to say anything more, and took Keiji to town to Dr. Genzai to escape the 'inquisition' a bit.

Ayame, Suzume, and Tsubame _adore_ Keiji even more than Yahiko had predicted. Sometimes, the descendant of Tokyo Samurai thought that he could see a strain in Keiji's expression when the girls were coddling him, but all in all he bore the coddling with good humour and kept on smiling cutely.

Either he was a masochist or just that stoic, Yahiko couldn't quite decide.

Normally, he was prickly about boys around Tsubame, but he didn't mind so much. For one, Keiji was too young for Yahiko to be bothered with the situation, and Tae had commented that Keiji was good for Tsubame—he had a way of coaxing out Tsubame's self-confidence with the most common little things the way Yahiko's brash nature couldn't. Thirdly, Yahiko was much too happy to see her finally getting over the slave's training—damned those slavers—to mind.

Keiji had started his Kamiya Kasshin training a week after his arrival. Kenshin had peeked in to see, then promptly dropped his jaw. Yahiko took that as a sign that he wasn't alone in his opinion of the younger boy's potential.

Patience of a monk, or a mountain. Keiji took things slowly but surely, mastering each step with precision and a scary level of dedication. And that was just the visible practice.

Yahiko was aware that Kaoru took Keiji out every morning on a run and a hand-to-hand martial arts session from Keiji's father style, and he found that the boy wore weights whenever he was clothed. It wasn't obvious, really, until he got hit by one of them when its' ties broke. It whacked him right between the eyes and knocked him flat out, to wake up with an ugly bruise and an almost tearfully apologetic little boy he couldn't find in himself to be mad with.

Soujirou seemed to be contemplating learning Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu as well, or at least the basics of it. He seemed to find the philosophy behind the sword style fascinating, and was far more inclined to give it credit compared to, as Yahiko heard, Kenshin, who had called it a pretty dream.

Now, Kenshin.

Yahiko idolized Kenshin, but let it never be said that he wasn't occasionally frustrated by the rurouni's stubbornly whacked frame of mind.

Sheesh, if he wanted Kaoru, the very least he could do was ask her instead of mooning and making himself miserable like that! It's not like nobody else knew about it, and when Yahiko had asked Saitou why the heck did just about everyone conclude that Kaoru was Kenshin's woman, the Wolf had snorted and in an uncharacteristic move explained to him about ki-sensing and Kenshin's passive possessiveness of one Kamiya Kaoru.

It couldn't be plainer to those who can sense ki than if Himura Kenshin had painted a sign saying 'Mine, back off!'

Yahiko wondered, knowing that Kaoru could sense ki as well as Saitou could, why she hadn't said anything other than saying that she wanted to be with Kenshin forever last year, before Enishi's Jinchuu hit the dojo, and even that could be taken in a different meaning.

He thought she would, at the very least, balk at the notion of being someone else's property, but she hadn't made a sound. And when once upon a time everyone would have agreed that she was head over heels in love with the redhead, no one was sure, now that she had retreated beyond the mystery of a woman.

In the meantime, live in the Kamiya Dojo continues…

* * *

Soujirou pressed his forehead against his raised knees, wrapping his arms around them and curled almost into a tiny ball with a contented sigh. 

"That posture really isn't very healthy, Sou-nii."

He raised his head and blinked at the little boy who had managed to sneak up on him, eyes very dark and particularly old that day.

Despite the look in his eyes, Keiji smiled brightly. "We're going to have a hanami(1) in the backyard in a couple of days, so things will get a little busy."

"Hanami?" Soujirou mused, "why in the backyard?" Then his eyes widened—of course they had to do it in private; he was still a wanted man.

Before he could start feeling guilty and miserable, though, Keiji shook his head in mirth. "Nothing to do with _that_, Sou-nii. Sano-san and Yahiko-nii could get rowdy—Okaa-sama told Keiji that we had something of a formal request by the authorities not to go celebrating in public. Not to mention that while there's only a limited amount of Sakura in our backyard, they are among the most beautiful in this town. Ask anyone, Keiji dares you, and they'll say the same."

Soujirou nodded, only partway convinced, but was already trying to calculate how much Sakura mochi they'd have to make.

Keiji giggled and got to his feet, sauntering off whistling a tune.

* * *

Kaoru leaned back against the greyish bark of the yamazakura in her backyard, looking up at the spring moon. The air was slightly cloying in the scents of sakura in full bloom, petals raining down on them. 

"Hanami in our very own backyard." Megumi sighed as she leaned against a post on the engawa. She had opted to stay with them at the dojo for the duration of her visit to Tokyo, as Kaoru kept a room open for her at all times. "Beautiful trees, Kaoru, do you know who planted them?"

The addressed young woman sighed, tightening her hold on the little boy curled against her left side among the greyish roots of the tree. Sano and Yahiko were quarrelling over a piece of fish on the picnic mat spread in the middle of the sakura trees. Soujirou—who had made the mistake of accepting a drinking challenge from Sano—was curled on her right, head pillowed on her outstretched legs. Saitou and Tokio were calmly sipping sake on the far corner of the mat, while Kenshin sat with his back against another post on the engawa, sword on the curve of his arm settling over one upraised knee, nursing his own sakazuki(2). Tae and Tsubame sat slightly behind Megumi, opting for tea instead of sake.

"Kaoru?"

She sighed again. "Persistent Megumi…" Keiji giggled slightly at that. "Keiji's father planted them when he came to live here permanently. That was… when I was four, I think."

The older woman gasped slightly, "But they look far older than that," she exclaimed.

"They do, and don't ask me why because I know about as much as you to the details. They just do."

"Oku-san! Won't you tell us what he's like? At the very least his name?"

"Stubborn Sano." Kaoru returned airily. "Why do you need to know? And just how much would you give to know anyway, hmm? I'm not telling for free."

Sanosuke stopped wrestling with Yahiko, who snatched the fish with a triumphant cackle and fled to the engawa and the relative safety of being near Kenshin. "Enough to fix up your storage shed's door?" The door had broken down earlier that week when Sanosuke had stumbled and promptly fell into it.

"You're going to fix that up anyway, or you'll deal with my wrath. Do you want that information enough to pay your tab at the Akabeko?"

Sanosuke choked on the sake he was guzzling. "Oku-san!"

"A compromise," she proposed with a slight mischief. "You can ask Saitou, because he knows."

The ex-gangster's mouth dropped open with disbelief. Paying his tab was one thing, and he didn't have the money anyway. But asking the Wolf? He had _pride_, dammit!

He was also really, really curious, and decided maybe this once…

"Oi, Saitou! You know the little kid's father?"

Megumi's eyes widened slightly in disbelief and she straightened. The Rooster-head had done it! He had swallowed his pride and asked the Wolf for information! Maybe he was finally growing up, though on second thought, she doubted it.

Saitou grunted slightly in response, putting down his sakazuki. Though the Battousai hadn't showed any outward reaction of interest, he had no doubt that the short redhead was listening intently on their conversation. Well, no one can say that he wasn't being a sport. "Ahou, have some manners when you're asking someone."

Tokio and Kaoru shared a look and rolled their eyes. Sano grumbled under his breath and gritted his teeth. "I'm asking nicely. If you'd be so kind as to tell us who Keiji's father is," he paused, then added hastily, "and what's he like, it'd be much appreciated."

Saitou snorted, and Sanosuke was about to give it up as a lost cause when the wolf opened his mouth.

"Yoshino Kazuomi."

They waited, but Saitou seemed to be content with just that one admission.

"_And?_"

"We _know_ his name already!" Yahiko protested loudly, slightly sullen.

"You do? But—Hey! Why didn't you ever tell me you know?" Sano whined, but Yahiko shrugged and would have made a face at the gangster if he weren't aware of Keiji's half-dozing presence.

Tokio prodded her husband, "Anata, I know it's not your habit, but surely it won't kill you to indulge them just this once."

The Wolf snorted again. "Yoshino Kazuomi is the other Shihan(3) of Kamiya Kasshin Ryuu and co-inheritor of the dojo along with the Tanuki. He is also a civilian co-operative for the police force; I've worked alongside him on occasions."

"Is that how you knew him?" Megumi ventured.

"Hardly. He was one of Okita's neutrally-inclined friends."

Kenshin started slightly, his narrowed eyes regarded the ex-Shinsengumi captain. "Okita Souji? Shinsengumi's First Captain?"

"Correct, Battousai." Saitou drawled, "You know, friendly smile, died of consumption—pity, for someone of his calibre to die of a disease."

"Five years after the war, that was." Kaoru interjected reflectively, fingers absently combing Keiji's hair, while the boy purred like a kitten. "Kazu and I were very sad to see him go. He was a nice man."

"So Yoshino introduced the two of you." It was almost a question, if it wasn't Saitou.

"He didn't." Kaoru commented almost absently. "I met him when Souji-san and Seizaburo-san were on a trip to Edo. A woman was trying to give me trouble—you know, one of those people who delight in making everyone else miserable—and she accused me of ruining the kimono fabric she bought. Souji-san saved me from being harangued to death by buying the bolt of fabric off her. He gave it to me."

"Sounds like the Baka alright."

That startled a laugh out of Kaoru, "You didn't insult everyone and everything when you were in Shinsengumi, Saitou, or so Souji-san told me. He said you were one of the politest individuals in the force."

The Wolf didn't dignify that with an answer, nor did he acknowledge the many bewildered stares thrown in his direction.

"Oi, oi! We're getting off topic here! You haven't told us what that Kazuomi guy's like." Sanosuke exclaimed, swigging more sake straight from the tokkuri(4).

"Keep drinking like that, Rooster Head, and you won't be sober enough to remember if he _does_ tell us about the guy." Megumi needled.

"Hey, hey! I've never forgotten a thing no matter how drunk I was!"

Saitou smirked. "They want to know what he's like, Tanuki. Should we indulge them?"

"You're the one giving out the details, Ookami. You may say as much as you like." Kaoru offered in lazy mischief.

"That's a tacit permission to say everything I know, which isn't much anyway." He took a moment to pause and inhaled the smoke of his cigarette. "Yoshino was a brilliant man, an accomplished warrior, patience of Buddha, and one of the most confusing persons I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. You had that last honour as well, Tanuki, never fear."

Kaoru laughed softly. "Kazu thinks that he's a simple man."

"To himself, maybe." Saitou snorted. "I never could understand why he insisted on that green bokken of his. I know he could handle a katana; I've worked with him often enough over the years to know that, and Okita never shut up whenever he had the chance to mention how well Yoshino handles a sword. That bokken slows him down—it's as heavy as a steel ball."

"Your criminals ain't worth a living blade, apparently." Kaoru shrugged lightly, sighing and tipping her head back against the trunk. Soujirou mumbled something and curled tighter on himself, snuggling slightly against her side like a child. "Kazu's bokken is made of a wood called Lignum Vitae, a tree that grows in South America. It's heavy, but very, very strong and durable. Even with a crack, it would pound our average kashi(5) bokken into pieces in probably about a five or so hits, honest."

Saitou mumbled under his breath and everyone else strained to hear.

"What was that?" Kaoru asked almost languorously.

"I said," caught, Saitou gritted his teeth and answered, "that bokken would put me at a disadvantage and he waved it around like it weighed as much as a chopstick."

The shihandai laughed, long and hard, jostling Soujirou half-awake to mumble his protest before passing out again, and waking Keiji from his half-slumber to blink wide, foggy eyes at her. "He probably, by accident, brought his suburito(6) instead the day you tried it. It's made of the same type of wood, but lined with heavier metal inside for practice," she consoled lightly.

"Was he a big man?" Yahiko, who had been uncharacteristically quiet until then, ventured with a hushed wonderment. "Have you ever fought him?" he added with much more eagerness.

"No, I haven't, as you call it, fought him. I really don't want to either."

"_Was_ he a big man?" The boy pressed, curious.

"Yoshino-san was about a little less than a head taller than Himura-san, and probably weighed about the same." Tae volunteered acidly. "He's a arguably the best chef I've ever known, though no matter how much I proposed to pay him he won't cook for my restaurant unless I needed an extra hand in the kitchen badly."

"Tae-san," Kaoru drawled, still slightly convulsed with laughter. "I said that Saitou can tell them about him, not you."

"Aa, gomen Kaoru." The Akabeko owner looked slightly abashed.

"Saa… That's enough, ne?" Kenshin, who had been listening intently, privately thought that Ishin Shishi was very lucky to never have this Yoshino Kazuomi as an enemy, if Saitou's telling was to be believed. Someone who the Third Captain of Shinsengumi hesitates to cross blades with… "It is growing very late, that it is." And he really didn't want to talk about Kaoru-dono's husband anymore. He sounds like a terribly good man.

He wasn't that much of a masochist, even if no one else believed it.

"Ken-shin! The night's just beginning! Don't be a spoilsport!"

"Maa, maa… this one thinks that it is late enough, that he does."

"And for once I'll agree with you, Himura." Saitou commented. "The moon's receding. Tokio and I shall take our leave of you. Thank you for the invitation, Tanuki."

"You're welcome, Ookami." Kaoru replied tartly, "Besides, with Aoshi and Misao unable to come down from Kyoto at the last minute, it's no trouble. Will you walk Tae and Tsubame to the Akabeko?"

Ignoring Kenshin's proclamation that he could do it, the police officer—quite gallantly for him—escorted the restaurant owner and the waitress out the premise.

With their guests gone, Sanosuke also took his leave. Yahiko, Megumi and Kenshin started clearing up the picnic. The doctor volunteered to do dishes with Yahiko, as Kenshin had cooked their food—with Soujirou. Normally, Kaoru would have helped as well, but tonight she had children curled on both sides.

"Should this one carry Soujirou to his room, Kaoru-dono?"

She looked up at him and smiled indulgently. "Kenshin, Kazuomi is Kazuomi." When the redhead looked at her with confusion, she added. "He's not perfect, but that didn't matter. He was himself, and that's all he really needed to be." She turned away from the questioning violet eyes and nudged Keiji awake. "Musuko, clean up and go to sleep inside. You may sleep in my room if you like." The child went off with a sleepy nod, slightly unsteady in making his way into the house, but never stumbling.

"Don't worry about Soujirou, Kenshin," she said softly as she gathered the sleeping young man into her arms and lifted him like a child. "He's not that heavy. I'll take him in. Would you brew me some tea to drink before I turn in, if it's not too much trouble?"

What trouble? If Kaoru-dono wanted the moon Kenshin would have tried to find a way to get it for her. "Aa, this one will see to the tea, that he will. Would you like it to drink it out here, Kaoru-dono?"

Now on her feet, she straightened and looked up at the trees. "Yes, I think it'd be nice to drink it out here, ne?"

* * *

Kenshin probably wasn't aware that she knew how he looked at her when he thought no one was watching. She wasn't, maybe, when she didn't have her senses fully operational. But now she definitely knew, though she didn't plan on doing anything about it—not in her nature to pursue, after all, despite being the predator. 

Not that knowing he looked at her with want didn't excite her, because it does, in a way that no one else had ever managed.

But she knew that he had to make the first move, if they were ever to have a relationship that works.

Sitting on the quiet engawa with only the red-haired man for company, she regarded the yunomi(7) and steaming tea. Kenshin had brewed the fresh sencha she had gotten from the Uji-affiliate—she had very carefully kept from everyone the fact that the one small container of tea was worth a small fortune. Fresh grass scent rose, and she could see the expanse of uninterrupted green at the back of her eyelids.

Things had gone well so far.

Soujirou was comfortable with them, Kenshin hadn't been called away, Keiji was by her side once more, and her haphazardly thrown family of people with absolutely no blood relation to each other were back together. Life was good.

"Kaoru-dono?"

"Hmm?" She drawled lazily, scenting the tea with half-lidded eyes and a faint smile. Memory was a double-edged sword, and she knew she was for the period she was free of them. But as painful as they were, she knew that she would never give them away. "Yes, Kenshin?"

They were her sunken treasures, waiting for her in the deep sea of her consciousness. She had dug them up again, and worn them with, perhaps, a little regret but much more acceptance. She had lived as well as she could, and she regretted very little, and would continue to do so.

"… Nothing…"

She was aware of Kenshin watching her sideway profile with something like painful longing, and in a way it hurt her to be aware of it. In contrast, the possessiveness in his ki amused her to see. This contradictory man…

Yahiko was puzzled, that she knew, why she did not say anything if she was aware of that possessiveness. They were also unsure if she had finally grown out of love with the redheaded ex-hitokiri, and worried about it.

Well, they really needn't worry. She was as in love with him as she was when she was seventeen. And perhaps even more, now, than she was, her feelings maturing with age and time.

And that was why she would never marry anyone else to her death. She might have been contented, but that would have hardly been fair to the man she might marry, other than him, even more if they love her when she couldn't fully return it.

That was why she would never marry Hibari, even if they ever made peace over Tsuyumi's demise.

And she would wait; memories weren't the only sunken treasures nor was consciousness the only ocean. She would never force this to the surface, so it must either rise on its own volition or never. She had hoped, perhaps, that it would be before Yahiko and Tsubame got themselves married. But truthfully, she doubted that.

And she was fine with that.

The wind rose in the darkness, petals dancing red and white and pink, their scent cloying the wind. Kaoru heard at the back of her mind familiar warm laughter of the man who planted them, and saw, in the back of her eyelids, his support of her.

She smiled.

_Cherry (petal) shell8,_

_hiding a pearl_

_from searching eyes.

* * *

_

Author Note:

-Whee, the end!

-Who are Hibari and Tsuyumi? Stay tuned for the sequel to find out. (spoiler)one will become a major character(spoiler end).

-As to the tea from Uji (shrugs) they weren't rich, even though they were not as impoverished as they were before—like, in the pirate episodes in the anime. Uji-tea is pricey, right enough, depending on the plantation brand and such.

-This fic was originally an exercise in limiting how much I write for one story, because my stories tend to go on and on and on. Needless to say, it wasn't a successful study. One good thing that came out of this effort is that I now knows a lot more about Japanese culture (and potteries) that I did before I started. Attention to detail is a very demanding thing, but they can, occasionally, be very educational.

-I thank all readers who had stayed with me until the end, for gracing this not-very-well-written fic with your attention. Now, people tends to tell me that I'm too hard on myself, but I will always insist that I could have done better. That said, if anyone has constructive criticism, I will welcome them. By all means, email me with long letters if you'd like; I will welcome them.

* * *

1 Hanami—Sakura-viewing party. 

2 Sakazuki--Sake cup. Nowadays they're called guinomi, but I'm not sure when the transition occurs, so sakazuki it is.

3 Shihan –Master of the dojo (or style, the distinction is a bit vague, I'm afraid).

4 Tokkuri--Sake flask

5 Kashi--Japanese white oak; _the_ material for bokken in Japan.

6 Suburito – intentionally heavier bokken, made for kata-practice (suburi single cutting). Due to its' weight, it's not suitable for sparring practice because it's kind of off-balance and instantly a disadvantage

7 Yunomi – basic Japanese teacup, which usually is made under tsutsugata-shape, and looks like handle-less mugs instead.

8 Cherry (petal) shells—Sakuragai—small seashells that very much resemble cherry petals


End file.
